• 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.

• 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.32 no.6
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• pp.383-390
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• 2019

A helideck is one of the essential structures in offshore platforms for the transportation of goods and operating personnel between land and offshore sites. As such, it should be carefully designed and installed for the safety of the offshore platform. In this study, a structural design optimization method for a lightweight offshore helideck is developed based on a genetic algorithm and an attainable design set concept. A helideck consists of several types of structural members such as plates, girders, stiffeners, trusses, and support elements, and the dimensions of these members are typically pre-defined by manufacturers. Therefore, design sets are defined by collecting the standard section data for these members from the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC), and integer section labels are assigned as design variables in the genetic algorithm. The objective is to minimize the total weight of the offshore helideck while satisfying the maximum allowable stress criterion under various loading conditions including self-weight, wind direction, landing position, and landing condition. In addition, the unity check process is also utilized for additional verification of structural safety against buckling failure of the helideck.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.453-460
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• 2017

In the offshore industry, helicopters are mainly used for transportation of goods or operating personnel between offshore sites and onshore facilities. A helideck is a structure that is required for landing and take-off of helicopters on the offshore structure. There are several shapes of helidecks depending on the type of offshore structures or installation location. Among them, cantilever-type helidecks usually provide more space on the topside of offshore structures and it is safer against potential accidents like fire or explosion. In this paper, the cantilever-type helideck is selected for the research object and topology design optimization is applied for lightweight design of the helideck. A finite element model is then created from the optimal layout of truss structures of the helideck, and structural analysis is performed under various landing conditions and wind loads. Based on the analysis results, the detailed section dimensions of structural members are determined so that the maximum stress at each structure member does not exceed the allowable stress of the structural material. Also, the final optimal design shows significant decrease in the total weight of the helideck.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.411-422
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• 2014

A helideck is a very valuable offshore structure for the take-off and landing of a helicopter. In order to design a helideck, the design parameters and various loads defined by the regulations related to the design of a helideck should be applied. In this study, a risk analysis was performed based on the helicopter accidents for seven years, and the frequency and possible reasons for accidents involving helidecks were investigated. In addition, a finite element analysis of a steel helideck mounted on the upper deck of a ship (shuttle tanker) was performed with the load that should be considered when designing a helideck. Based on the results, a parametric study of helideck was carried out by applying a variety of design parameters, and an improved helideck design was presented. This improved helideck reduced the steel used by up to 24% compared to the initial helideck design, and the results of a finite element analysis were analyzed and compared with those of the initial analysis.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.519-529
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• 2016

The helideck structure must satisfy the safety requirements associated with various environmental and accidental loads. Especially, there have been a number of fire accidents offshore due to helicopter collision (take-off and/or landing) in recent decades. To prevent further accidents, a substantial amount of effort has been directed toward the management of fire in the safety design of offshore helidecks. The aims of this study are to introduce and apply a procedure for quantitative risk assessment and management of fires by defining the fire loads with an applied example. The frequency of helicopter accidents are considered, and design accidental levels are applied. The proposed procedures for determining design fire loads can be efficiently applied in offshore helideck development projects.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.43-48
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• 2017

In recent years, the demand for ships and offshore platforms that can navigate and operate through the Arctic Ocean has been rapidly increasing due to global warming and large reservoirs of oil and natural gas in the area. Winterization design is one of the key issues to consider in the robust structural safety design and building of ships that operate in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic regions. However, international regulations for winterization design in Arctic condition regulated that only those ships and offshore platforms with a Polar Class designation and/or an alternative standard. In order to cope with the rising demand for operating in the Arctic region, existing and new Arctic vessels with a Polar Class designation are lacking to cover for adequate winterization design with HSE philosophy. Existing ships and offshore platform was not designed based on reliable data based on numerical and experiment studies. There are only designed as a performance and functional purposes. It is very important to obtain of reliable data and provide of design guidance of the anti-icing structures by taking the effects of low temperature into consideration. Therefore, the main objective of this paper reconsiders anti-icing design of aluminum helideck using the heating cable. To evaluate of reliable data and recommend of anti-icing design method, various types of analysis and methods can be applied in general. In the present study, finite element method carried out the thermal analysis with cold chamber testing for performance and capacity of heating cables.

• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2018.06a
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• pp.176-176
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• 2018

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.372-379
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• 2023

International oil prices are expected to increase from $85 a barrel this year to up to $100 a barrel in the second half of the year; this is likely to increase orders for offshore plants in the global market. One main characteristic of offshore plants is that a large helideck is located on the top side, and aluminum alloys are used as the basic material of the structure for weight reduction and corrosion resistance. Shipowners are increasing the size of helicopters to quickly evacuate lives in the event of an emergency, and the safety use load of devices that can stably secure helicopters to the deck is also required to increase. Owing to the nature of the aluminum material, the structural strength caused by welding is greatly reduced; therefore, the fixing device must be designed by embedding it in the deck and fixing it with bolts. In this study, a model applying aluminum alloy 6082-T6 was developed to develop a helicopter fastening device that can be used for large helidecks (diameter = 28 m). The developed item was verified through nonlinear structural strength calculation to satisfy the load used for the actual fastening condition. The load condition with a 45° showed a lower ultimate strength than the 90° case owing to local plastic collapse. The nonlinear structural collapse behavior showed a result similar to that of the experimental test. The main contents derived from this study are considered to be reference materials when evaluating the structural strength of similar aluminum equipment.