Proceedings of the Tenth (2000) International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference Seattle, USA, May 28.

June 2, 2000 Copyright 2000 by The International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers ISBN 1-880653-46-X (Set); ISBN 1.880653-49-4 (VoL HI); ISSN 1098-6189 (Set)

Inundation Effect of Wave Forces on Jack-Up Platforms

C.Y. Liaw National University of Singapore Singapore

ABSTRACT
A concentrated force acting on the platform at the mean water level is used to represent the inundation effect of the variable wave surface. Its effects on the total and the maximum wave forces are investigated based on structural modal analysis and linear wave considerations. The second-order transfer function of the Volterra/Wiener representation for the nonlinear wave force, with the inundation effect included, is derived. The power spectral density functions of the responses of two typical jack-up platforms are evaluated numerically to show the significant contribution of the inundation effect on the dynamic responses of the structures.

are derived for the different terms of various orders of the polynomial series. Since the procedure involves multivariable Fourier Transform, the derivation and numerical evaluation of high-order nonlinear systems can be very tedious. Borgman (1969) considered the nonlinear drag term in the Morison equation for wave force and studied a cubic representation of the drag term without current. Gudmestad, et al. (1983) included the effect of current using a fourth order expansion. The third-order Volterra series and the related transfer functions of the nonlinear drag term were studied by Li et al., (1995). It has been shown by the above authors that, with the cubic drag term included, the structural response spectrum exhibits a significant resonance phenomenon near the frequency of 3OOp,where COpis the peak frequency of the wave spectrum. The nonlinear inundation effect due to variable surface, on the other hand, produces even-order harmonic force components (Gudmestad, 1988) which cause the force spectra to have peaks at 2O)p. Typically, the fundamental frequency of a jack-up offshore platform is in the range of 0.25 to 0.12 Hz (Kjeoy, et al., 1990), which is about two to three times the peak wave frequency. The nonlinear responses near 2OOp can therefore be very significant, especially if we consider the fact that the wave energy is usually higher near 2COpthan near 3oop. The inundation effect, however, was not included in the above-mentioned works of nonlinear frequency domain representation of jack-up platforms. In this paper, the inundation efffect of sinusoidal wave is studied. In order to compare the effects of drag and inundation, the modal forces, which can be related directly to the structural responses, is evaluated based on an assumed structural mode shape. The second-order nonlinear transfer function, with the inundation effect included, and the power spectral density functions of the modal force and displacement are then derived. The results of nonlinear stochastic analyses of two typical jack-up platforms are then presented.

KEY WORDS: Jack-up platform, inundation effect, nonlinear wave spectrum analysis, Volterra series.

INTRODUCTION Considerable works have already been carried out by many researchers on the study of nonlinear wave forces on jack-up platforms. It is commonly accepted that nonlinear dynamics has significant effect on the responses of many jack-up structures, and there are mainly two nonlinear effects attributable to wave forces. One is the nonlinear drag force, which is usually the predominant wave force component for the slender structural members of a jack-up platform and can be evaluated using the well-known Morison formula. The other important nonlinear effect can be related to the variable submerged length of structural members near the free water surface, or the inundation effect. The common practice for including the nonlinear effects in dynamic analysis is to perform time-history simulations of the structural responses. In order to have statistically meaningful results, many such time-consuming simulations are usually required. A more direct approach is, of course, to carry out the stochastic analysis in the frequency domain. However, nonlinear analysis in frequency domain is more involved than the normal approach based on linear assumptions. One well-known method of modelling nonlinear systems in stochastic analysis is the Volterra/Wiener representation based on the Volterra series (Schetzen, 1980; Rugh, 1981). The nonlinearity is represented by a polynomial expansion, and nonlinear transfer ~nctions

INUNDATION EFFECT The Morison wave force, f, per unit length of a structural member is given typically as

f =k~, OU+kDUlU 0t

(1)

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