• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.59 no.6
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• pp.993-1017
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• 2016

Helicopters are essential for supporting offshore oil and gas activities around the world. To ensure accessibility for helicopters, helideck structures must satisfy the safety requirements associated with various environmental and accidental loads. Recently, offshore helideck structures have used aluminium because of its light weight, low maintenance requirements, cost effectiveness and easy installation. However, section designs of aluminum pancakes tend to modify and/or change from the steel pancakes. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize section design and evaluate the safety requirements for aluminium helideck. In this study, a design procedure was developed based on section optimization techniques with experimental studies, industrial regulations and nonlinear finite element analyses. To validate and verify the procedure, a new aluminium section was developed and compared strength capacity with the existing helideck section profiles.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.46-54
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• 2012

More than 70% of the accidents that occur on offshore installations stem from hydrocarbon explosions and fires, which, because they involve blast effects and heat, are extremely hazardous and have serious consequences in terms of human health, structural safety, and the surrounding environment. Blast barriers are integral structures in a typical offshore topside module to protect personnel and safety critical equipment by preventing the escalation of events caused by hydrocarbon explosions. Many researchers have shown the adequacy of the simple design tool commonly used by the offshore industry for the analysis and design of blast walls. However, limited information is available for corrugated blast wall design with explosion impact response characteristics. Therefore, this paper presents a parametric study on the explosion impact response characteristics of an offshore installation's stainless steel corrugated blast wall. This paperalso investigates and recommends design parameters for the structural design of a corrugated blast wall based on a nonlinear structural analysis of experiential results.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.711-724
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• 2012

The goal of this study is to conceptually orientate optimized layouts of outrigger belt trusses which are in widespread use today in the design of tall buildings by strut-and-tie truss models utilizing a topology optimization method. In this study unknown strut-and-tie models are realized by using a typical SIMP method of topology optimization methods. In tradition strut-and-tie model designs find the appropriate strut-and-tie trusses along force paths with respect to elastic stress distribution, and then engineers or designers determine the most proper truss models by experience and intuition. It is linked to a trial-and-error procedure based on heuristic strategies. The presented strut-and tie model design by using SIMP provides that belt truss models are automatically and robustly produced by optimal layout information of struts-and-ties conforming to force paths without any trial-and-error. Numerical applications are studied to verify that outrigger belt trusses for tall buildings are optimally chosen by the proposed method for both static and dynamic responses.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.60 no.5
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• pp.851-873
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• 2016

Helidecks are vital structures that act as a last exit in an emergency. They transport people and goods to and from ships and offshore plants. When designing the structure of a helideck, it is necessary to comply with loading conditions and design parameters specified in existing professional design standards and regulations. In the present study, finite element analysis (FEA) was conducted with regard to a steel helideck mounted on the upper deck of a ship considering the emergency landing of the helicopter. The superstructure and substructure were designed, and the influence of various design parameters was analyzed on the basis of the FEA results.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.205-212
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• 2021

Offshore jacket structures generally comprise steel members, and the safety standard for jacket structures typically focuses on the steel components. However, large amounts of concrete grouting is filled in the legs of the Gageocho jacket structure to aid in the recovery from typhoon damage. This paper proposes a safe and lightweight design for the Gageocho ocean research station comprising steel members instead of large amounts of concrete reinforcement in the legs. Based on the actual design, the structural members are grouped according to their functional roles, and the inner diameter of the cross-section in each design group is defined as a design variable. Structural optimization is carried out using a genetic algorithm to minimize the total weight of the structure. To satisfy the conservative safety standards in the offshore field, both the maximum stress and the unity check criteria are considered as design constraints during optimization. For enhanced safety confidence, extreme environmental conditions are assumed. The maximum marine attachment thickness and the section erosion in the splash zone are applied. Additionally, the design load is defined as the force induced by extreme waves, winds, and currents aligned in the same direction. All the loading directions surrounding the structure are considered to design the structure in a balanced and safe manner. As a result, compared with the current structure, the proposed structure features a 45% lighter design, satisfying the strict offshore safety criteria.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.43-56
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• 2018

Vertical cutoff walls such as steel pipe sheet piles (SPSPs) have been commonly applied for the construction of the offshore waste landfill site. Because the SPSPs are sequentially installed by connecting their joints to those of adjacent piles, their mechanical stability should be ensured against the inherent external forces on the sea. The objective of this study is to evaluate the structural performances of the newly developed types of SPSP joint compared with those of other joint types. The problems of the traditional SPSP joints are investigated, and an advanced joint shape of SPSP, which is named double H with L-T (DHLT) joint, are designed for improving the constructability and maintenance. Full-scale models of the DHLT joint are manufactured, and then its joint areas are filled with grout material. After 28 days of curing time, compressive and tensile strength tests were performed on the joint models and the test results were compared with those of the traditional joints. Experimental results show that the structural capacities of the DHLT joint models are lower than those of traditional joints due to the influence of grout and steel members. In the cases of the compressive strength test, especially, bending occurs on steel H-beam with no distinct cracks in grout due to the asymmetrical structure of joint which has no reaction force. This study shows that the performance of the SPSP joint can be improved by considering the influence factors on the structural capacities estimated by the experimental tests.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.16 no.1 s.68
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• pp.73-79
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• 2004

Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) was applied to control the vibration of an offshore structure due to ocean waves. The errors caused by the linearization of the fluid-structure interaction effect and the phenomena when using the linearized equation of motion in TMD design were analyzed. To determine the performance of TMD in controlling vibration, both regular waves with varying periods and irregular waves with different significant wave heights were used. When the offshore structure received regular waves with a period similar to the first natural period of structure. TMD performed well in terms of response reduction. Such was not the case for the other periods. however, In the case of irregular waves, TMD triggered the reduction of structural response for waves with relatively small significant wave height. For irregular waves with relatively big significant wave height, however, TMD did not show any control effect. Therefore, TMD is useful in reducing offshore structural vibration due to ambient waves, thereby helping secure fatigue life.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.25 no.2_1
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• pp.141-148
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• 2022

In this paper, the evaluation equations proposed by Tange et al. and Ando et al. were used to evaluate the threshold stress intensity factor ∆K^R_th(s) and fatigue limit ∆𝜎^R_wc, according to the small crack of offshore structural steel F690. Despite the differences in concept and shape of the two equations, the ∆K^R_th(s) and ∆𝜎^R_wc proved completely consistent. It is possible to use these equations to evaluate the dependence of the crack length on the ∆K^R_th(s) and ∆𝜎^R_wc of structures made of all steel grades. With these equations, the characteristics of microcracks can be quantitatively evaluated, and the safety and reliability of the structure can be secured.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.209-219
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• 2022

Offshore platforms in seismically active areas must be designed to survive in the face of intense earthquakes without a global structural collapse. This paper scrutinizes the seismic performance of a newly designed and established jacket type offshore platform situated in the entrance of the Gulf of Suez region based on the API-RP2A normalized response spectra during seismic events. A nonlinear finite element model of a typical jacket type offshore platform is constructed taking into consideration the effect of structure-soil-interaction. Soil properties at the site were manipulated to generate the pile lateral soil properties in the form of load deflection curves, based on API-RP2A recommendations. Dynamic characteristics of the offshore platform, the response function, output power spectral density and transfer functions for different elements of the platform are discussed. The joints deflection and acceleration responses demands are presented. It is generally concluded that consideration of the interaction between structure, piles and soil leads to higher deflections and less stresses in platform elements due to soil elasticity, nonlinearity, and damping and leads to a more realistic platform design. The earthquake-based analysis for offshore platform structure is essential for the safe design and operation of offshore platforms.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.435-451
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• 2015

Evaluation of the performance of aging structures is essential in the oil and gas industry, where the inaccurate prediction of structural performance can have significantly hazardous consequences. The effects of structure failure due to the significant reduction in wall thickness, which determines the burst strength, make it very complicated for pipeline operators to maintain pipeline serviceability. In other words, the serviceability of gas pipelines and elbows needs to be predicted and assessed to ensure that the burst or collapse strength capacities of the structures remain less than the maximum allowable operation pressure. In this study, several positions of the corrosion in a subsea elbow made of API X42 steel were evaluated using both design formulas and numerical analysis. The most hazardous corrosion position of the aging elbow was then determined to assess its serviceability. The results of this study are applicable to the operational and elbow serviceability needs of subsea pipelines and can help predict more accurate replacement or repair times.