• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.237-259
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• 2024

Although the investigation on the effect of loaded out-of-plane braces on the values of the stress concentration factor (SCF) in offshore tubular joints has been the objective of numerous research works, a number of quite important cases still exist that have not been studied thoroughly due to the diversity of joint types and loading conditions. One of these cases is the multi-planar tubular KK-joint subjected to axial loading. Tubular KK-joints are among the most common joint types in jacket substructure of offshore wind turbines (OWTs). In the present research, data extracted from the stress analysis of 243 finite element (FE) models, verified against available experimental data, was used to study the effects of geometrical parameters on the chord-side SCFs in multi-planar tubular KK-joints subjected to axial loading. Parametric FE study was followed by a set of nonlinear regression analyses to develop three new SCF parametric equations for the fatigue analysis and design of axially loaded multi-planar KK-joints.