Determination of allowable free span length plays a crucial role in design of offshore pipelines. The seabed intervention cost and safety of an offshore pipelines project are largely influenced by pipelines free spanning during the project life time. Different criteria are proposed by both the current designing guidelines and researchers there is however lack of comprehensive assessment of independent parameters affects the design length of free span. In this note, it is intended to investigate the effects of seabed formation along with axial force on Natural Frequency of offshore pipelines. Based on this assessment a new simple formula is proposed. Finally, to evaluate the result of this study, the allowable free span length of Qeshem Island pipelines is calculated as a case study and compared with those of the DNV (1998) and ABS (2001) guidelines and the modal analysis.

Keywords: Offshore pipelines, free spanning, allowable length, modal analysis and pipe resonance

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