Limiting Criteria of Dent Damage for Fixed Offshore Platform in Peninsular Malaysia

Offshore industry has set up its based a long time ago. Throughout the years, many offshore platforms have been installed and many damages of installed platforms have been recorded. The damaged offshore platforms must be repaired where a standard reference is needed to determine the level of damages as well as to come out with maintenance program. Researches have been carried out based on Gulf of Mexico‟s platforms. However there are platforms which have been installed in other fields outside Gulf of Mexico like in Peninsular Malaysia. Therefore a threshold of damages of the offshore platforms must be determined for Peninsular Malaysia as well due to numbers of offshore platforms that have been installed in Peninsular Malaysia. This study is carried out to determine the critical depth of underwater dent damage in braces for Peninsular Malaysia platforms. This study also aims to quantify the effects of dent damage on member integrity (reduction in member strength). Finite element analysis is a significant analysis to determine the maximum strength of the platforms subjected to dent damage which is then used to quantify the reduction in member compressive strength. The analysis is run by using SACS software where a PMO‟s platform is modeled before the analysis take place. Dimension of the platform is needed to model the structure in SACS software. Modeling of the platform is an important step before the other steps. The modeled platform is subjected to storm condition environmental load as well as ship impact load which later can cause dent formation.