Fatigue and Fracture Mechanics of Offshore Structures

The fatigue phenomenon process in structural elements and connections. The tubular welded joints used in the construction of offshore structures can experience millions of variable amplitude load cycles during their service life. Such fatigue loading represents a main cause of degradation in these structures. As a result, fatigue is an important consideration in their design. Fatigue and Fracture Mechanisms of Offshore Structures present novel research and the results of wave-induced stress on the operational life of offshore structures. Increasing oil consumption in the world and scarcity of land-oil resources due to political and economical reasons has caused offshore oil exploration and production to become a growing investigation field in the past six decades. The analysis of structures to use energy deposits and other recourses, or for other purposes, in ocean environments requires a special consideration since environmental and loading conditions offshore are very complicated and contain large uncertainties. Offshore structures are continuously subjected to random ocean waves producing stochastic loads that cause mainly fatigue failure in structural components.