Reliability-Based Structural Design of Ship-Type FPSO Units

Abstract

Design criteria based on LRFD format is proposed here for FPSO structural design. The design criteria of FPSO structures accounts for load effects and their probabilistic distributions, in which an “Environmental Severity Factor” is introduced for considering the site-specific conditions of hydrodynamic loading; and for limit states for three types of failure modes: primary, secondary and tertiary. The method presented in this paper can be applied to develop structural design criteria for new-built FPSO and converted FPSO from oil tankers.