A Shortcut Fatigue Analysis Method

Abstract

A shortcut fatigue analysis method is presented which can be used to provide fatigue life estimates during the preliminary design phase of deepwater fixed platforms. For this type of structure, the method is intended to provide order of magnitude fatigue life estimates only. For simpler structures, such as deepwater offshore caissons, the shortcut analysis can provide good agreement with a detailed spectral fatigue analysis. The fundamental assumption of the method is that the dynamic transfer function can be closely approximated by the product of the static transfer function and a single degree of freedom dynamic amplification factor, which has been adjusted to produce a “fit” to the true DAF at resonance. Only one dynamic analysis of the structure needs to be performed, i.e., to determine the true DAF at resonance.