Response Based Time Domain Structural Analysis on Floating Offshore Platform

Abstract

Performing the structural analysis and its integrity evaluation is the ultimate goal of design. However, design value estimation based on load-based analysis is still used as a conventional procedure in the offshore industry. The conventional method can be overly conservative and unrealistic with inconsistent load conditions since external loads such as mooring/riser and higher order hull response is inconsistently considered based on simplified linear assumptions. To assess the reliable integrity of a floating offshore platform, the response-based analysis has been successfully applied. This paper presents a response-based time domain structural analysis of a floating offshore platform. Direct time domain structural analysis is applied by mapping of external environment loads on the floating platform at every instantaneous time interval. Accordingly, correct phase relationship between the various external loads and hull motion including nonlinear effects can be considered. For computational efficiency, present study uses a set of load components based on an efficiently selected basis function for hull motion and environment loadings. The stress time history is obtained directly by synthesizing the load components, and hence an actual time-domain structural response can be captured effectively. Thus, same structural analysis results can be used to evaluate both strength and fatigue criterion for a floating offshore structure. Present analysis method is successfully applied to the evaluation of extreme global strength for a conventional semisubmersible platform. Present time domain analysis result on the structure response is compared with conventional load-based analysis result.