Bow Structure Design of the FPSO installed in the North Sea under the Flare Slamming Load

This paper is about the bow structure design of the ship-typed and turret moored FPSO which is subjected to the bow-flare slamming load in harsh North Sea environments. Quad 204 FPSO project involves the redevelopment of the existing Schiehallion FPSO which is damaged by impact wave loads. Normally all offshore systems including FPSO are designed to withstand the 100 year storm I.e. the storm that happens once every hundred years at the location where the system is installed. Several incidents have revealed that impact loading is important issue for moored floating production systems. In this paper, the design impact loads are estimated considering the ship owner’s specification, measured data from model tests, requirements of the classification society rules and results of numerical simulation analyses. The impact pressure by numerical analysis is 1.8 times greater than required value by CSR adopted by IACS. Based on the selected design load, plastic design formulae allowing the local material yielding are applied for the initial scantling of the bow structure. To verify the structural integrity, FE analyses are carried out considering the local area subjected to the impact wave loads. Their results such as structural arrangement, design loads and scantlings are shown and discussed. It is found that plastic design formulae in adopting Initial design phase give sufficiently conservative results in terms of structural strength.