• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2022

The majority of tubular joints commonly found in offshore jacket structures are multi-planar. Investigating 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. However, due to the diversity of joint types and loading conditions, a number of quite important cases still exist that have not been studied thoroughly. Among them are internally ring-stiffened two-planar TT-joints subjected to axial loading. In the present research, data extracted from the stress analysis of 243 finite element (FE) models, verified against available numerical and experimental data, was used to study the effects of geometrical parameters on the chord-side SCFs in two-planar tubular TT-joints reinforced with internal ring stiffeners subjected to two types of axial loading. Parametric FE study was followed by a set of nonlinear regression analyses to develop six new SCF parametric equations for the fatigue analysis and design of axially-loaded two-planar TT-joints reinforced with internal ring stiffeners.