The Residual Curvature Method (RCM) has often been used for shallow water projects to initiate a controlled lateral buckle but has rarely been proposed for deep and ultra-deep water due to the challenges in installation, landing orientation on very soft soils associated with deep water, and the resulting in-place initiation reliability. This paper presents how the RCM can be designed for deep and ultra-deep water flowline installation to ensure a controlled as-landed residual curvature configuration on the seabed, resulting in a reliable lateral buckling initiation for flowlines operating under high internal pressure and temperature conditions. The case study is the Mero 2 project offshore Brazil.

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