FPSO is a kind of important exploitation platform used in ocean oil and gas industry, which has the unique character of mooring at outsea for a long time. Since it can not be inspected and maintained thoroughly at dock like other kinds of ships, the reliability of FPSO hull girder during the whole service should be focused. Based on latest corrosion database and rational corrosion model, the ultimate strength of one FPSO is calculated under the conditions of slight, moderate and severe corrosion. The results not only provide the reliability under different corrosion conditions, but also do well for further inspection and maintenance research. The results provide necessary foundation for deciding inspection intervals and maintenance measures, which has practical sense to improve the general safety level of ocean engineering.
A model based on the data from forced vibration experiments is developed for predicting the vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) of elastically mounted circular cylinders in flow. The assumptions for free and forced vibration tests are explored briefly. Energy equilibrium is taken into account to set up the relationship between the dynamic response of self-excited oscillations and the force coefficients from forced vibration experiments. The gap between these two cases is bridged straightforwardly with careful treatment of key parameters. Given reduced mass m and material damping ratio ζ of an elastically mounted circular cylinder in flow, the response characteristics such as amplitude, frequency, lock-in range, added mass coefficient, cross-flow fluid force and the corresponding phase angle can be predicted all at once. Instances with different combination of reduced mass and material damping ratio are compared to investigate their effects on VIV. The hysteresis phenomenon can be interpreted reasonably. The predictions and the results from recent experiments carried out by Williamson's group are in rather good agreement.
