GA-based offshore helideck design considering manufacturability and buckling safety

Abstract

A helideck is an essential structure in offshore platforms for the transportation of personnel and goods between the land and offshore sites; therefore, the overall processes from the design to the installation should be conducted carefully to ensure the safety of the platform. This article discusses an optimal structural design of a cantilever-type offshore helideck based on a genetic algorithm (GA) considering its manufacturability and buckling safety. Because helidecks are not mass-produced structures, they are assembled from the ready-made products of structural steel. Therefore, the design variable sets in the GA optimization were efficiently limited to the standard products in the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) code using the attainable design set concept. In addition, owing to the nature of the offshore industry, offshore structures are designed conservatively, complying with the classification regulations. Thus, both the maximum allowable stress and unity values were precisely checked during the optimization. Furthermore, both linear and nonlinear buckling analyses were performed to check the dynamic stability of the optimal design.

Keywords:

• Offshore helideck
• design optimization
• attainable design sets
• genetic algorithm
• buckling safety

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education(No. 2018R1D1A1B07040517), and by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy(MOTIE), KOREA, through the Education Program for Creative and Industrial Convergence(No. N0000717).