What´s Offshore Engineering?

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Offshore engineering is a new and rapidly developing field. Even though the main interest is still oil production related, offshore structures are also widely used for energy production from ocean waves, mining, port structure and other similar fields. By definition an offshore structure can be defined as the structure or a facility which is being installed in marine environment, mainly in the sea in order to produce and transmit electricity, gas, oil and also other resources. Offshore structure can be classified into two major group; floating and fixed structures. As for the fixed structures, it can be further divided into steel jackets tower, compliant towers, concrete gravity based structure, jack-ups structure and also the tension leg structure (TLP).

Figure 1: Deep water system of offshore structure (Dr. Pulpong Pongvithayapanu, n.d)

1.1 Fixed Structure
A compliant tower is a flexible structure with flex plies (principally flexible legs or axial tubes) to control mass and stiffness characteristics so as to mitigate the effects of periodic wind, wave and current forces. The tower is supported laterally at its lower end by the flex piles, but is permitted to slide vertically along the flex piles and rotate about its lower end. In response to movement of the tower away from the vertical, the piles establish a righting moment (couple) acting at the point of pile attachment. This provides the stabilization necessary to restore the tower to a vertical orientation. Natural periods are usually greater than 25 sec so they are generally well outside wave periods. Compliant towers are designed to sustain significant lateral deflections and forces. Compliant tower are relatively slender compared to jacket/tower structure but have higher installation costs due to the portion of the flex pile must be driven after the tower in place and use a considerable amount of steel.
The compliant tower platform are designed for water depth more than jacket platform which are normally up to 600 meters.

Figure 2 : The design of compliant tower structure (Lyle Finn, 1987)
Gravity structures are fixed structures that are held in-place against environmental action solely by their weight plus that of any contained ballast, together with foundation resistance resulting from their weight and lateral resistance from any skirts. The gravity structure consists of large reinforced concrete bottom mounted structure, caisson. One or more tower are rigidly secured to the caisson and extend upward to a drilling and production deck above ocean surface.

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