There are different methods adopted to install marine pipelines, such as S-lay, J-lay, Tow-lay and Reel-lay. Traditionally J-lay is considered to be suitable in deep water and ultra-deepwater. However with the development of the installation technique in recent years, S-lay has been extended to deep water and ultra-deepwater pipelaying, too. For S-lay, stinger is one of the key equipments, which provides a suitable curved envelope and a smooth transition to protect the pipeline when the pipeline leaves the firing line to enter the launching ramp. And this project funded by National High Technology Research and Development Program of China is to research the ultra-deep water stinger on the pipelaying vessel that can lay pipe up to 3000 m depth

The purposes of this project are to comprehend the design concept and technology of deepwater pipelaying stinger and to achieve self-innovative design.

Based on the basic principle of stinger and S-lay, the project focuses on checking the design of the designed stinger by GUSTO firstly, and makes some detailed check in cooperation with related departments then. Subsequently the scaled model experiment of the designed stinger system is to be developed, which can be useful to validate the design and assess the system performance. Finally, technical supports are provided for the final design of a novel stinger.

According to the study of stinger design and model experiment, an optimal scheme of the novel stinger design is to be provided, which covers the structural optimization of stinger design, the choice and arrangement of attached facilities, corresponded software system, and so on. Simultaneously, an integrated design flowchart should be concluded including design demands, analysis methods, and technical regulations.