Offshore Structures

The module Offshore Structures of the Hydraulic and Offshore Structures (HOS) track, is worth 9 ECTS and consists of the following units:

• Ultimate Strength and Fatigue = 3 ECTS (this unit is shared with the module CIEM4110 Hydraulic Structures

• Design of Offshore Structures = 6 ECTS

This module enables students to produce conceptual engineering designs for fixed offshore structures accounting for ultimate strength and fatigue criteria. During this course, students gain a thorough theoretical understanding of the design process, its structuring, available design methodologies and the philosophy behind the design codes. Furthermore, this module addresses offshore, geotechnical, structural and reliability aspects in coherence to analyse the behaviour of offshore structures.

The ultimate strength and fatigue unit specifically focuses on the ultimate strength and fatigue assessment of steel and concrete structures. The provided knowledge and skills are required to be able to perform the verification of offshore structures design and are therefore directly applied in the design component of this module.

Throughout the module students work on a group design project, where each student team designs an offshore support structure from scratch up to a preliminary design by performing a full design-cycle. This design-cycle includes:

1. The design and assembly of the structure geometry and the structural configuration, including a natural frequency analysis,

2. Determining and assessing the permanent and environmental loads, including both hydrodynamics and wind, on the structure,

3. The design, analysis and evaluation of its foundation,

4. The analysis of the jacket structure by using structural mechanics approaches, and

5. The evaluation of the jacket structure against ULS and, if applicable, FLS design criteria.

Through this group design project, students will not only learn to judge their design against ULS and FLS design criteria, but they will also develop an instinct on how to best modify and improve their design based on both static and dynamic structural analyses. Thereby, students will learn how to analyse and evaluate the dimensioning and performance of structural components for strength and stability. Furthermore, students learn to predict how changing (parts of) their design will influence the corresponding loads and based on their insight in these loads, be able to defend their design choices. Moreover, students will learn what the practical implications of their design choices are for operations and other feasibility and life-cycle aspects. To reinforce the understanding of these aspects, the course program also includes a visit to an offshore structures fabrication yard.

During this course, students will additionally learn how to collaborate effectively in a team and develop skills and competences to motivate their assumptions and provide argumentation of their design choices by accounting for relevant moral values, norms and principles.