Offshore oil and gas production was conducted throughout the entire 20th century, but the industry's modern importance and vibrancy did not start until the early 1970s, when the North Sea became a major producer. Since then, the expansion of the offshore oil industry has been continuous and rapid.
Pipelines, and more generally long tubular structures, are major oil and gas industry tools used in exploration, drilling, production, and transmission. Installing and operating tubular structures in deep waters places unique demands on them. Technical challenges within the field have spawned significant research and development efforts in a broad range of areas.
Volume I addresses problems of buckling and collapse of long inelastic cylinders under various loads encountered in the offshore arena. Several of the solutions are also directly applicable to land pipelines. The approach of Mechanics of Offshore Pipelines is problem oriented. The background of each problem and scenario are first outlined and each discussion finishes with design recommendations.

* New and classical problems addressed - investigated through a combination of experiments and analysis
* Each chapter deals with a specific mechanical problem that is analyzed independently
* The fundamental nature of the problems makes them also applicable to other fields, including tubular components in nuclear reactors and power plants, aerospace structures, automotive and civil engineering structures, naval vehicles and structures

Stelios Kyriakides is currently the John Webb Jennings Chair in Engineering and Professor n Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics for the University of Texas at Austin. He is also the Director of the Research Center for Mechanics of Solids, Structures, and Materials at UT. Stelios has had over 35 years involvement with the offshore oil and gas exploration and production industry world-wide. Previously, he was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard and California Institute of Technology. He earned a B.Sc. (1st Class Honors) in Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Bristol, a MS and PhD, both in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology. He is active in many journals including Elsevier's Applied Ocean Research and the International Journal of Solids and Structures.

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Offshore facilities and pipeline installation methods
Chapter 3: Pipe and tube manufacturing processes
Chapter 4: Buckling and collapse under external pressure
Chapter 5: Collapse of UOE pipe under external pressure
Chapter 6: Collapse of dented pipes under external pressure
Chapter 7: Buckling and collapse under combined external pressure and tension
Chapter 8: Inelastic response, buckling and collapse under pure bending
Chapter 9: Buckling and collapse under combined bending and external pressure
Chapter 10: Inelastic response under combined bending and tension
Chapter 11: Plastic buckling and collapse under axial compression
Chapter 12: Combined internal pressure and axial compression
Chapter 13: Elements of plasticity theory