• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.53-58
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• 2010

Offshore floater such as FPSO, drillship is composed of topside and hull side, and the interface structure is called topside module support. In this study, practical considerations were investigated for the design of topside module supports, from the concept design stage to the final stage of structural determination, in view of design efficiency and construction productivity. The effects of welding design factors of topside module support, such as welding throat thickness, sectional welding area, and welding man-hours, were compared and analyzed closely with respect to productivity. The current status and problems regarding the application of deep or full penetration welding are discussed, and a direct-calculation method is suggested as a possible solution to these problems.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.18-23
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• 2018

FPSO consists of topside modularized plants for production of crude oil, and hullside structures that serve as support for the topside and storage of produced crude oil. The structural behavior of the FPSO topside module and its supporting hull depends on the interface structure that connects them, and the interface structure consists of a combination of individual unit support structures called Module Support Seat (MSS). Types of interface structures are various and, accordingly, the basic design of the FPSO topside module structure is greatly influenced, so various design methods should be considered from the initial design phase. Structural design of FPSO topside module requires consideration of the number of MSSs, connection type, and structural analysis options such as the range of finite element models, load conditions, and boundary conditions for verification of structural strength. In this study, the comparison combination cases for the above considerations were derived and the strength evaluation was performed, and the structural behavior characteristics of the topside module were compared and analyzed through a detailed review of the analysis results. The results of this study are considered to be a good reference for designing a more reliable topside module structure.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.58 no.5
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• pp.314-321
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• 2021

In the existing whole ship analysis, topside was modeled as mass element. However recently, the topside is modeled as beam element due to the owner's requirement to improve the maturity of the whole ship FE model. To follow the owner'srequirement, detailed information for topside drawing and modeling, which may delay analysis schedule, is needed. However, it is hard to respond effectively to this matter due to the lack of study on the topside from the hull perspective. Therefore in this study, the effect of the topside on the hull is investigated when the topside is modeled as a mass element or beam element respectively. In addition, the interface modeling method is analyzed to verify modeling method used in the existing whole ship analysis. The results indicate that the interface and topside modeling method used in existing whole ship analysis are appropriate. This conclusion will be the technical basis for responding to owner's requirement about the topside modeling method.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.11
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• pp.19-27
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• 2020

On an offshore plant topside, various types of offshore facilities for processing energy resources, such as oil and gas, and equipment and outfitting for connecting these facilities are installed in a limited space. An offshore plant superstructure is composed of numerous supporting rack structures and reinforcements for securing and supporting offshore installations and the related equipment. This paper describes the development of design support software to support this superstructure design efficiently. The developed design support software, which was based on AVEVA Marine's PML(Programmable Macro Language), supports the parametric method for superstructure design. A method of batch 3D modeling from 2D drawings for supporting rack structure produced in the basic and detailed design was also developed using AutoLisp. In addition, through the application example of superstructure module design, the design support software introduced in this paper can be expected to reduce the design time by more than 90% compared to the use of only basic functions of AVEVA PDMS.