STRENGTH ANALYSIS OF SELF ELEVATING UNITS W. Winkworth 1. INTRODUCTION Jock-up platforms are the most common type of offshore mobile unit and are the workhorse ofthe offshore exploration industry Inrecent years jack-ups have also been used as crane barges, accommodation units and os early production platforms. “There ae several different designs of jack-up built to date. For many shallow water units the legs are formed by a single member, either square cr round, the method of jacking beng 0 hydrulic positive engogement system which ulzes pins thot are moved step by step up and down the leg, There are also mat type units where the leg are connected ot the bottom by a large structural mat. The jack-up considered inthis paper, however, is the most common type of unit used for deep water. It wll hove ether thre or four legs, each leg constructed ofa triangular or square lattice framework. At the bottom ofthe legs are large load bearing shels called ‘spud cans’ which rest on the seabed when the unit is jacked up. The legs are moved up and down through the hull utilizing rock and pinion jacking system. Each corner or chord ofthe lattice leg has one or two rack attached ta it.The pinions are housed in the jacking towers on the deck. A typical system will consist of sx pnions at each corner of the leg. Fora triangular lg tis sa total of 18 pinions, each driven by an electric or hydraulic motor. Each pinion, is able to jack a maximum food of 200 to 300 tonnes. & typical jacking speed for these type of structures is ofthe order of half metre per minute 2 OPERATION AND CRITICAL DESIGN CONDITIONS 2.1. Pre-loading While onder tow the legs of the jack-up are raised as far as possible to minimise drag. At location, the legs are lowered through the hull until the spud cans reach the seabed and the hulls then jacked clear (of the water and the legs pre-loaded. The Society's Rules "! require that every jack- Lup should have 100% pre-load capability That is a load equivalent to the maximum gravity plus the maximum storm loading rust be applied to each leg. This is achieved either by variable ballast or by df- ferential jacking on the legs. The purpose Of this exercise is to test the foundation and to ensure a form footing. The hull is then jacked up clear of the water such that there isan air gap between the hull and the largest expected wave occuring at high tide, 2.2 Critical Design Conditions Three important design conditions must always be considered: () On location: under a realistic combi- ration of extreme environmental conditions in the fully jacked-up configuration. Since the member sizes in the leg may be reduced for operati- Cn in shallower water, several water depths must be investigated, In transit: with the maximum lenght of legs elevated above the barge for tow under the maximum specified mo- tons. (ii) Jacking-up: during maximum allow- able waves, the impact of the legs on the seabed may be a design case. ‘The above conditions are critical primarily for the legs and their back-up structure. The general barge structure, decks etc. canbe most highly stressed during the floa. Foto Flying Focus ting phase and by local loading cases and checked according to the Society's Rules for the Construction and Classification of Mobile Offshore Units. The hull is con- structed from normal ship grade steel ex- cept at critical locations around the jacking towers and leg guides where increased notch toughness and ductility are required. Ie is essential to keep the leg weight to a ‘minimum in order to improve the floating stability during tow with the legs fully jac ed up and to reduce the loads in the leg, guides and jacking tower. Therefore the steel used for the leg construction are ge- erally of very high serength having yields of up t0 690.0 Nim ‘Only the analyses of the jacked-up condi- ton on location is considered inthis paper. SenW S7STEJAARGANG NRO 3BHowever, the general analysis method is applicable to the other load cases. The ana- lysis can be divided into the following as- pects {@) Environment (0) Determination of loading (©) Overall analysis (4) Detailed analysis 3. ENVIRONMENT 3.1 General Jack-up platforms are essentially mobile platforms and therefore environmental Conditions considered in the design are normally specified by the owner. The ope- rations of the unit is then restricted to those areas where the extreme storm conditions are equal to or less than the de- sign conditions considered, Where the area of operation is known the Society ‘would expect to approve the environmen- tal conditions chosen for design. 3.2 Importance of Current tis not generally appreciated that current ‘makes a very large contribution to the to- tal loading on lattice-leg type jack-ups. Typical results illustrating the increase in ‘overall wave loading with variations in cur rent, are given in Table I Pavone Fite Fig. | Maximum stress in a typical jack-up leg due to waves and currents. pes typical of jack-up leg chords, although some has recently been published for a specific chord design.) Because of tis lack of data the Society has conducted a series (of wind tunnel experiments to determine ‘comparative results for most of the major types of leg chords presently in use. These tests were performed in an 8 ft diameter ‘wind tunnel with an effective chord diame ter of Bins. ‘Within the scope of this paper there is in- sufficient space to deal fully with the re- sults of these tests, however a typical set of resultsis given in Fig. 2. These indicate how the drag coefficient varies with orientation Table Wave loading due to current on lattice legs Horiz. Force Hori Force Horiz. Force Horiz Force Water Wave Zero 0.6 mis 12 mis 18 mvs Depth (rm) Height (m) Current Current. Current. © Current (fonnes) __(Konnes)___(fonnes)__ (tonnes) 78 2B 1032 189 1407 1646 30 669 810 1006 Ins Ho 7 430 539 77 920 3.3. Defining Environmental Parameters ‘The number of design cases defined in the Operations Manual does not normally co- ver all the combinations of wind, wave, ‘current and water depth to which a jack- up may be exposed. There is therefore a ‘eed for further guidance in order to de- termine safe operating locations for the unit. One of the most convenient ways to display this information isin the form of a ‘carpet plot, an example of which is shown inFig. I. Graphs such a the one illustrated should be included in the Operations Manual 4. DETERMINATION OF LOADS. 4.1 Wave Loading Critical to both the wind load and wave and current loads is the evaluation of the drag coefficient for the leg chord. The sha- pe of the leg cord carrying the rack is generally not circular. There is very litle published data on drag coefficient for sha- Fig. 2 Variation of drog coefficient with Rey- ‘olds number. (of the chord to the flow and with Reynolds number. For the braces, which are gene- rally circular, a Cp of 0.6 is assumed. 4.2 Marine Growth Traditionally, the effect of marine growth has not been included inthe design of jack- ps. The basis ofthis assumption is that ma- rine growth is discouraged by the frequent location moves and because the legs are in air for considerable periods during tow to new locations. In addition, there is ample ‘opportunity for cleaning during the tow. However, where a unit will be operating for a long period at one location, particu larly alongside a fixed platform with pro- vides, a source of ‘infection’, an allowance for marine growth should be ineluded in ‘the wave load calculations. 4.3 Wind Loads Ie should be noted that the wind loading can alter significantly with water depth. This is bacause, at reduced water depths, the length of exposed leg is increased and vice versa. Formulae for calculating wind loading are given in the Society's Rules for Mobile Ofishore Units ‘Wave loads are calculated using the So- ciety's in-house wave programs and, com- bined with wind and gravity loads, are ap- plied to the overall ack-up model. 5. OVERALL ANALYSIS 5.1 Overall Finite Element Model In this idealsation, itis not usually neces- sary to spend a great deal of effort in accu- rately representing the stifiness of the bar- -ge as this is very stiff in comparison with the legs. The attachment of the legs to the hull is more critical and the idealisation of this area is carefully assessed. Based on the ‘expected penetration at site, the legs are normally assumed pinned at 3 metres be- low the mudline. A typical finite element ‘mode! is ilustrated in Fig. 3. “The secondary moment due to leg deflec- Fig. 3 Typical overall jack-up NASTRAN model 6 SeniW S7STE [AARGANG NR 10thon fs included in the internal loads at the lower guide. ‘The overall stability of the leg acting as a beam column is then checked using the re- sults of this analysis. 5.2 Determination of Critical Case ‘The selection of the critical case for ajack- up leg design is dependent on determining ‘he combination of bending moment and axial load, together with the appropriate local loading form the guides and pinions, that produces the maximum stresses in the leg seructure. Different cases may be criti- cal for the chord, horizontal brace and diagonal brace. A rigorous search for the critical conditions would require a finite element analysis for each wave direction and wave crest position. This would have to be carried out at each water depth and for atleast two positions of guide location relative to leg bracing. Since this approach is both prohibitively expensive and time ‘consuming, engineering judgement and ex. perience are used to determine the critical ‘cases. In general, the Society has found that for a 3-leg unit, the wave approach direc don and crest position giving the maxi ‘mum axial load for the leg structure is cri- tical 5.3 Overturning Safety Factor ‘Ajack-up platform is considered as agravi- ty platform for calculation ofthe safety fac- tor against overturning. The resistance to ‘overturning i given by the overall weight multiplied by the distance to the point about which overturning is assumed to oc- cur. The requirements for overturning safety factor therefore have a major m= pact on the jack-up leg spacing and conse- ‘quently the cost ofthe jack-up. Lloyd's Register’s Rules for Mobile Off- shore Units require that unies must 'with- stand the overturning moment of the com- bined environmental forces any direction, with areserve against loss of postive bear- ing onany footing... The most critical min- imum variable load condition and C.G. lo- ‘ation are to be considered for each load direction’. However, present codes do not sufft- ently define the assumptions adopted for caleulation of the safety factor against ‘overturning to ensure consistent factors of safety. The assumptions made concern the following aspects: (I) Percentage of variable load assumed to be acting on the deck (i). The support point about which the overturning takes place (ii), Allowance for leg deflection The Society recommends that only 10% of variable leads should be considered when caleulating the overturning safety factor. Where the designer requires to consider an increased percentage of variable load in order to achieve an acceptable safety fac- tor, then this must be included asa specific requirement in the Operations Manual The Society also recommends that for the calculation of resistance moment the unit 's considered supported at the centre line lof the legs about which the unit is rotating. ‘Other support positions, such as the edge of the spud can, should only be considered. where the unit has been designed for that case and the sea bottom is sufficiently hard to resist the loading considered. In general, the Society would expect to achieve a safety factor against overturning of 1.2 when the caleulations are performed fon the above basis. 6 DETAILED ANALYSIS 6.1, Idealisation Ieis necessary to check in detail the maxi- ‘mum stresses in the leg chord and leg brac- ing. These generally occur at the leg to hull connection. The jack-house, leg guides and back-up structure are also checked at this point in the analysis, ‘The jack-up leg considered is attached to the hull by guides and gear pinions. The loads in the leg are reacted in the following ‘manner; shear is reacted by the guides and vertical load by the pinions or jacks. For a jack-up with a rack and pinion jacking sys- tem the bending moment may be reacted by differential horizontal shears or by vary ing vertical reactions at the pinions. The experience of the Society is thatthe pinion load paths relatively stiff and will generally attract load up to the limit of the pinion brake capacity. The pinions do not normal- ly provide for a reverse loading reaction, that is, where the differential vertical load atone chord due to the overall leg bending ‘moment is larger than the gravity load. The overall reaction system is shown in Fig. 4 The applied shear, axial load and bending moment in the leg are determined from the overall analysis. In the detailed finite ‘element analysis these loads are applied to the leg several bay lengths below the low- fer guide to ensure the correct distribution of internal loads. For designs on which some form of leg clamping device is fitted, reverse vertical loading is allowed. The stifiness of the ‘guides, pinions and back-up structure at both the pinions and the upper and lower ‘guides is represented by springs. The springs must take account of the stfiness (of the jacking system and whether it is a fixed system or a floating system suppor- ted on shock absorbers. Where the chord has a rack on one side only, the rack and pinion type jacking system produces two ‘other important local loading effects: (i) The offset of the gear pitch point from the chord centre line causes a local bending moment in the chord. (ii) Theangle of the rack teeth produces side component to the vertical load, ‘A further complication is that the guides support the leg chords in a normal direc- tion only and this has to be simulated in the l = fea Fig. 4 Reaction of jack-up leg loads by guides ‘ond gear pinions. analysis. The effect of the guide system on ‘the way in which the load in the legis reac- ted is shown in Fig. 5(a). Method | showsa circular guide acting against the leg chord For some directions of loading the reac- tion js on one chord only and this is obvi ously important in the structural design Method 2 involves guides acting on the rack or on side plates. It can be seen that the pattern of loadin the leg will vary con- siderably depending on the guide system adopted Fig. 5(a) Guide reactions. ‘SenW S7STEJAARGANG NR 10 327