• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.453-460
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• 2017

In the offshore industry, helicopters are mainly used for transportation of goods or operating personnel between offshore sites and onshore facilities. A helideck is a structure that is required for landing and take-off of helicopters on the offshore structure. There are several shapes of helidecks depending on the type of offshore structures or installation location. Among them, cantilever-type helidecks usually provide more space on the topside of offshore structures and it is safer against potential accidents like fire or explosion. In this paper, the cantilever-type helideck is selected for the research object and topology design optimization is applied for lightweight design of the helideck. A finite element model is then created from the optimal layout of truss structures of the helideck, and structural analysis is performed under various landing conditions and wind loads. Based on the analysis results, the detailed section dimensions of structural members are determined so that the maximum stress at each structure member does not exceed the allowable stress of the structural material. Also, the final optimal design shows significant decrease in the total weight of the helideck.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.359-366
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• 2020

In this study, a simulation-based damage estimation method for helidecks is proposed using an artificial neural network. The structural members that share a connecting node in the helideck are regarded as a damage group, and a total of 37,400 damage scenarios are numerically generated by applying randomly assigned damage to up to three damage groups. Modal analysis is then performed for all the damage scenarios, which are selectively used as either training or validation or verification sets based on the purpose of use. An artificial neural network with three hidden layers is constructed using a PyTorch program to recognize the patterns of the modal responses of the helideck model under both damaged and undamaged states, and the network is successively trained to minimize the loss function. Finally, the estimated damage rate from the proposed artificial neural network is compared to the actual assigned damage rate using 400 verification scenarios to show that the neural network is able to estimate the location and amount of structural damage precisely.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.383-390
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• 2019

A helideck is one of the essential structures in offshore platforms for the transportation of goods and operating personnel between land and offshore sites. As such, it should be carefully designed and installed for the safety of the offshore platform. In this study, a structural design optimization method for a lightweight offshore helideck is developed based on a genetic algorithm and an attainable design set concept. A helideck consists of several types of structural members such as plates, girders, stiffeners, trusses, and support elements, and the dimensions of these members are typically pre-defined by manufacturers. Therefore, design sets are defined by collecting the standard section data for these members from the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC), and integer section labels are assigned as design variables in the genetic algorithm. The objective is to minimize the total weight of the offshore helideck while satisfying the maximum allowable stress criterion under various loading conditions including self-weight, wind direction, landing position, and landing condition. In addition, the unity check process is also utilized for additional verification of structural safety against buckling failure of the helideck.

• Special Issue of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• 2015.09a
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• pp.63-68
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• 2015

This paper presents fatigue analysis of helideck structures located in FPSO. After FPSO is moved to the target position where production of resource is performed, FPSO stays at the target position and performs production of resource, storage and off-loading during the design life. Helideck structure is located in FPSO essentially for the movement of personnel and life rescue at emergency situations by using helicopters. Because inertial load induced by FPSO motion and landing and taking-off load of helicopter occur at helideck structures cyclically, helideck structures should be designed to withstand fatigue loads. Therefore, The fatigue assessment of helideck structures should be performed with fatigue loads. Effect of stress concentration due to misalignment between welded plates is considered in fatigue assessment additionally.