| This work deals with the study of the thermomechanical behaviour of multilayered thermal insulation systems protecting subsea pipelines, used in the context of deep sea offshore exploitation (down to 3000 m water depth). The first step of this work consisted in obtaining experimental data on the thermal, mechanical and water diffusion behaviour of insulation materials, particularly of syntactic foams (polymer matrix reinforced with hollow glass microspheres), which are widely used in the thermal insulation of pipelines. The development of experimental tests on industrial multilayered coated structures under representative deep sea conditions (until 300 bar external hydrostatic pressure) represented one of the major aims of this work. The global heat... |
