DESIGN OF OFFSHORE STRUCTURES

For Practising Engineers and Students

Dr.S.Nallayarasu
Associate Professor
Department of Ocean Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Madras,
Chennai - 600036, India
Dr. S. Nallayarasu, Associate Professor in the Department of Ocean Engineering, IIT
Madras has a total of 20 years of experience in Oil and Gas industry, research and teaching.
Prior to joining the Department of Ocean Engineering, he was working in the industry and
was involved in the analysis and design of offshore structures around the world. During
the tenure at Aker Singapore as head of Structural Engineering, he has carried out most
challenging offshore platforms in the Middle East, South China Sea and Indonesia. The
projects include large topsides with float-over installation, launch and lift jackets over 100m.
He has been involved in the concept development for the ONGC process platform projects
in the west coast of India including review of the final design. Currently he is working on
research areas related to floating and fixed structures in deep water and investigation on
hydrodynamic response of Spar and semi-submersible structures. His publications include
non-circular Spars, hydrodynamic response of Spar hulls with heave damping plates, top ar-
ticulated columns, Spar linked with Semi-submersibles and efficiency of Spar Hull Geometry.
He has guided many post graduate students in the field of hydrodynamic response of floating
structures and fixed platforms. His current interest includes development of code check pro-
cedure for static strength of ring stiffened tubular connections, damping elements for floating
structures using CFD studies and PIV techniques. He is currently teaching subjects such
as Design of Offshore Structures, Materials and Fabrication of Offshore Structures, Foun-
dations for Offshore Structures and Installation of offshore Structures. He has conducted
Short term course on Offshore Structural Engineering for fixed and floating structures for
the industry including Engineers India Limited, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, SAIPEM
Italy, PetroFac Limited, Larsen & Toubro Limited, Technip, France.

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SYNOPSIS

The book has been organised from basics to advanced topics including geometry of fixed
offshore structures, loads, design methodology, global structural analysis for inservice and
preservice instllation forces. Further, the topics such as design of tubular members and joints
as per latest codes has been addressed. The manuscript has been developed with various
examples from recent projects.

The specialised topics such as material selection for jacket and deck structures including
corrosion is addressed. Corrosion protection of such structures using sacrificial anodes has
also been included with examples. Material selection including special properties for jacket
nodes has been discussed in detail which will provide information for teh designers.

A chapter containing fabrication facilities, procedure and sequence of fabrication for the
jacket and topside facilities is included. This will provide good insight in to specilised
problems faced by fabricators for offshore structures.

The book also include a chapter on foundation design from basic soil mechanics to the
driveability of the steel pile foundation. Relevant information from recent projects including
pile refusal, remedial measures are included which provides rich practical aspects of the
design.

The book contains several example problems on topics relevant for the design and practicing
engineers which will help them understand the concepts, relevant design methods for use in
the projects. Similalry, the book covers advanced topics such as spectral fatigue analysis,
design for accidental loads such as fire, blast and ship collision.

The book has updated information suitable to be used with API RP 2A and ISO 19902
codes for teh design of fixed offshore platform structures.

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4
Contents

1 INTRODUCTION 21

1.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

1.2 Types of Offshore Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

1.3 Fixed Platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

1.3.1 Steel template Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

1.3.2 Concrete Gravity Platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

1.4 Compliant Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

1.4.1 Compliant Tower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

1.4.2 Guyed Tower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

1.4.3 Tension Leg Platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

1.4.4 Articulated Tower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

1.5 Floating Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

1.5.1 Floating Production System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

1.5.2 Floating Production, Storage and offloading System . . . . . . . . . . 31

1.6 Subsea System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

1.7 Fixed Platform Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

1.7.1 Functional Classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

1.7.2 Geometrical Classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

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1.7.3 Foundation Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

2 LOADS 35

2.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

2.2 Types of Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

2.3 Gravity Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

2.3.1 Dead Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

2.3.2 Facility Dead Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

2.3.3 Fluid Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

2.3.4 Live Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

2.3.5 Drilling Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

2.4 Environmental Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

2.4.1 Wind Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

2.4.2 Wave and Current Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

2.4.3 Current Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

2.4.4 Marine Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

2.4.5 Morison Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

2.4.6 Wave-Current Interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

2.4.7 Selection of Wave Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

2.4.8 Wave Load on a Member . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

2.4.9 Maximum Global Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

2.4.10 Buoyancy Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

2.4.11 Ice Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

2.4.12 Mud Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

2.5 Load Estimation and Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

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2.6 Load Combinations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

3 MATERIALS AND CORROSION 61

3.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

3.2 Structural Steel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

3.2.1 Structural Member Classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

3.2.2 Steel Grades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

3.2.3 Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

3.2.4 Chemical Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

3.2.5 Carbon Equivalent (CE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

3.2.6 Mechanical Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

3.2.7 Notch Toughness Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

3.2.8 Supplementary Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

3.3 Structural Steel Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

3.4 Corrosion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

3.4.1 Seawater Corrosion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

3.4.2 Factors influencing corrosion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

3.4.3 types of corrosion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

3.4.4 Rates of corrosion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

3.5 Corrosion Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

3.6 Cathodic Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

3.6.1 Sacrificial Anode System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

3.6.2 Impressed Current System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

4 GLOBAL STRUCTURAL ANALYSES 77

4.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

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4.2 Structure Geometry selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.3 Geometry Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

4.3.1 Axis System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

4.3.2 Joints or Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

4.3.3 Members and properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

4.3.4 Offsets and Eccentricities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

4.3.5 Wish-bone Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

4.3.6 Dummy Structure Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

4.4 Foundation Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

4.4.1 Pile Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

4.4.2 Soil Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

4.4.3 Pile Group Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

4.5 Load Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

4.5.1 Dead Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

4.5.2 Equipment Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

4.5.3 Fluid Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

4.5.4 Drilling Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

4.5.5 Live Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

4.5.6 Wind, Wave and Current . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

4.6 In-place Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

4.6.1 Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

4.6.2 Geometry Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

4.6.3 Load Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

4.6.4 Topsides Load COG Shift Envelope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

4.6.5 Minimum and Maximum Water Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

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4.6.6 Maximum Wave Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

4.6.7 Allowable Stresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

4.7 Dynamic Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

4.7.1 Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

4.7.2 Geometry Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

4.7.3 Load Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

4.7.4 Foundation Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

4.7.5 Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

4.8 Seismic Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

4.8.1 Design criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

4.8.2 API Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

4.8.3 IS 1893 guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

4.8.4 Response spectra method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

4.8.5 Seismic co-efficient method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

4.9 Fatigue Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

4.9.1 Deterministic Fatigue Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

4.9.2 Wave Scatter Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

4.9.3 Spectral Fatigue Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

4.9.4 Fatigue Life Calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

4.9.5 S-N Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

4.9.6 Stress Concentration Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

4.9.7 Foundation Linearisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

4.10 Boat Impact Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

4.10.1 Impact Vessels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

4.10.2 Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

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4.10.3 Method of Computing Impact Energy Dissipation . . . . . . . . . . . 111

4.10.4 Energy dissipation by member . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

4.10.5 Energy Dissipation by Boat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

4.10.6 Energy Dissipation by Overall jacket deflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

4.10.7 Structural Strength During Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

4.10.8 Post Impact Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

4.10.9 On-Bottom Stability Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

5 DESIGN METHODOLOGY 119

5.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

5.2 Design Stages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

5.2.1 FEED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

5.2.2 Basic Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

5.2.3 Detailed Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

5.3 Design of Topsides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

5.3.1 Platform Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

5.3.2 Deck Arrangement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

5.3.3 Deck Elevations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

5.3.4 Deck Leg Sizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

5.3.5 Beam/Girder Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

5.3.6 Deck Construction method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

5.3.7 Deck Appurtenances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

5.4 Design of jacket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

5.4.1 Jacket Framing Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

5.4.2 Lift versus Launch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

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