Nonlinear Behavior of Single Piles in Jacket Type Offshore Platforms Using Incremental Dynamic Analysis

Abstract

Offshore platforms are some of those structures which are built to withstand environmental and accidental loads during oil exploitation operation. One of the most usual types of these platforms is the Jacket Type Offshore Platform (JTOP) which can be divided into three important parts, which are Deck, Jacket, and piles. In order to increase the safety, particular attention should be paid to earthquake excitations which are directly applied to the piles of these structures. Nonlinearity in piles and buckling of the struts are important issues which have to be considered by the designers of offshore platforms. Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) is a powerful tool to assess the capacity of a structure upon seismic loads. In this paper incremental dynamic analysis has been implemented on single piles considering soil-pile interactions and free field site response. The use of nonlinear materials and lateral load resisting elements in the incremental dynamic analysis done in this paper has made it possible to get promising insights for incorporation of appropriate limit states and applications of performance based engineering. Special Engineering Demand Parameters (EDP) and Intensity Measures (IM) have been introduced for the single pile dynamic analysis in jacket type offshore platforms.