| 摘要 |
A flexible pipe for transporting a fluid in a marine environment. The pipe comprises a liner for confining the fluid, an armoring layer surrounding the liner, and an outer protective sheath surrounding the armoring layer and allowing radial expansion and contraction of the armoring layers. The outer protective sheath comprises at least two protective layers of helically wound composite wires with essentially opposite winding angles and locally held together, providing a relatively flexible yet fixed structure of the outer sheath. The outer sheath is held together in an array of discrete spots or along linear or curved paths. Flexibility is maintained because the stiffness in shear in the wires of adjacent protective layers may be made much larger in areas being locally held together than outside these areas. This allows a change of angles between the wires of two adjacent layers of the outer protective sheath during elongation or shortening of the pipe. |
