Abstract
AbstractBased on relevant accident experiences with oil and gas platforms, structural integrity management of offshore structures is briefly outlined, including adequate design criteria, fabrication and operational procedures, as well as life cycle quality assurance and control. The focus is on developing an operational design standard for accidental collapse limit states to ensure robustness or damage tolerance. The focus is to ensure an acceptable safety level against progressive failure leading to total loss in view of initial damage caused by accidental actions due to operational errors and abnormal structural damage due to fabrication errors and abnormal deterioration during operation as well as the actions on the damaged structure and inherent uncertainties. Moreover, the damage tolerance required for achieving safety by inspection, monitoring and repair strategies, is briefly addressed. While the basic damage tolerance requirement refers to the survival of the structure in certain damage conditions, wider aspects of robustness in terms of the structure’s sensitivity to the deviation of action effects and resistances from normal conditions are also briefly addressed. In particular, it is suggested to provide robustness in cases where the structural performance is sensitive to uncertain parameters, by choosing conservative values of these parameters.
Highlights
The oil and gas industry provides about 50% of the energy in the world, with about one-third from offshore reservoirs
The basis for this paper, is to establish a procedure to ensure an acceptable safety level against progressive failure leading to total loss in view of initial damage caused by accidental actions due to operational errors and abnormal structural damage due to fabrication errors and abnormal deterioration during operation as well as the actions on the damaged structure and inherent uncertainties
Based on in-service experiences for oil and gas platforms, a framework for safety management of offshore structures is briefly outlined in terms of design criteria and QA/QC in all life cycle phases and especially inspection and monitoring during fabrication and operation
Summary
The oil and gas industry provides about 50% of the energy in the world, with about one-third from offshore reservoirs. Service experiences show that accidental actions and abnormal strength due to gross errors or omissions made during design, fabrication, or operation contribute significantly to the risk of failure Such features are not covered by the ultimate and fatigue limit state criteria. The causes of accidents or failures may be classified according to the relevant risk reduction measures, which include design criteria, quality assurance and control (QA/QC) relating to the engineering process, as well as fabrication and operational procedures and inspection, monitoring, maintenance, repair, and replacement of components. The structure should be designed to be damage tolerant or robust, i.e., “to have the ability to limit the escalation of accident scenarios—relating to a possible abnormal floating position or structural damages—caused by accidental actions or abnormal strength due to fabrication or excessive deteriorating phenomena—into accidental conditions with a magnitude disproportionate to the original cause.”.
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