Vibration Analysis and Evaluation for the Offshore Structure Using Simplified Model and RSS Method

The evaluation of the vibration characteristics of offshore structure in the design stage is important to ensure the safety of structure, equipment and worker. Conventionally, the vibration analysis of the offshore structure is carried out according to its own analysis procedure including the selection of vibrating equipment, FE modeling, evaluation of excitation forces and criteria. The efficient modeling of the vibration equipment and the consideration of the phase of excitation forces are necessary to reduce the calculation time and to increase the accuracy of analysis. In this paper, the efficient and accurate vibration analysis method is introduced including the simplified model of equipment and the RSS (root squared summation) method. The vibration equipment was modeled as the simplified model of which mesh size is reduced by 90%, however, its vibration characteristics such as natural frequency and vibration modes are not changed. In addition, the RSS method was applied in the forced vibration analysis to consider appropriate phase of excitation forces. As the RSS method is the summation of all the vibration response with respect to each excitation forces, it presents more reasonable and conservative vibration evaluation. The proposed vibration analysis method has been confirmed by conducting various offshore projects and is expected to be more efficient for the design of offshore structure.