• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.425-438
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• 2007

In this paper, unsettled technical controversies concerning about fatigue strength analysis for FPSO, one of the representative floaters, associated with welding types, screening methods, fabrication tolerances, corrosion margins and Morison loads are described based on yard practices. Basic theory for stochastic fatigue analysis is introduced as detail as possible. In order to resolve large parts of the controversies, a new fully stochastic fatigue analysis program for FPSO is developed.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.5-16
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• 2008

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.9-20
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• 2018

Due to integrated stochastic wind and wave loads, the supporting platform of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) has to bear six Degrees of Freedom (DOF) motion, which makes the random cyclic loads acting on the structural components, for instance the tower base, more complicated than those on bottom-fixed or land-based wind turbines. These cyclic loads may cause unexpected fatigue damages on a FOWT. This paper presents a study on short-term fatigue damage at the tower base of a 5 MW FOWT with a spar-type platform. Fully coupled time-domain simulations code FAST is used and realistic environment conditions are considered to obtain the loads and structural stresses at the tower base. Then the cumulative fatigue damage is calculated based on rainflow counting method and Miner's rule. Moreover, the effects of the simulation length, the wind-wave misalignment, the wind-only condition and the wave-only condition on the fatigue damage are investigated. It is found that the wind and wave induced loads affect the tower base's axial stress separately and in a decoupled way, and the wave-induced fatigue damage is greater than that induced by the wind loads. Under the environment conditions with rated wind speed, the tower base experiences the highest fatigue damage when the joint probability of the wind and wave is included in the calculation. Moreover, it is also found that 1 h simulation length is sufficient to give an appropriate fatigue damage estimated life for FOWT.