RELIABILITY-BASED ASSESSMENT OF EXISTING OFFSHORE JACKET PLATFORMS: A CASE STUDY IN PERSIAN GULF

A large number of existing offshore platforms are operating beyond their design life due to the high cost of replacement. The safety of these structures creates strongreasons to develop an effective probabilistic framework for the reliability-based assessment of the structure. This paper presents a reliability-based approach for quantitative assessment of existing offshore jacket type platforms in terms of the Reliability Index (RI). RI would be a simple index to judge the structural integrity of platform. A sufficient number of numerical analyses have been carried out to consider the effect of different uncertainties of system by conducting Monte Carlo Simulation. Next, the probability failure and RI of the structure have been estimated by regarding the Reserve Strength Ratio (RSR) as a desirable limit state. Sensitivity analysis has also been carried out to detect the impact of different source of uncertainties on the RI of an existing platform.