Dynamic Performance and Crashworthiness Assessment of Honeycomb Reinforced Tubular Pipe in the Jacket Platform under Ship Collision

Abstract

The collision between the pipe legs of jacket platforms and bypassing ships is of great concern for the safety assessment of platforms. Honeycomb structures have been widely used owing to their unique deformation and mechanical properties under dynamic impact loads. In this paper, two typical honeycomb structures, namely hexagonal honeycomb and arrow honeycomb, were constructed for the impact protection of inclined pipe legs in jacket platforms, and the present study aimed to assess the dynamical performance and crushing resistance of the designed honeycomb reinforced structure under ship collision by using the numerical simulation software ANSYS/LS-DYNA. The dynamical performance of the honeycomb reinforced pipe leg was investigated considering various influential parameters, including the impact velocity and impact direction. The crashworthiness of the two types of honeycomb was evaluated and compared by different criteria, namely the maximum impact depth (δmax), specific energy absorption (SEA) and the proposed index offset sliding (OS). The results demonstrated that both the hexagonal honeycomb structure and the arrow honeycomb structure can reduce the damage of inclined pipe legs caused by ship collision, while the hexagonal honeycomb can provide the better anti-collision capacity, which can well reduce the offset sliding and better protect the pipe leg from ship collision.