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Collision analysis of ships and jack-up rigs

Zhang, Shengming; Pedersen, Preben Terndrup; Ocakli, Hasan

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Proceedings of the ICTWS 2014 7th International Conference on Thin-Walled Structures

Publication date:
2014

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Zhang, S., Pedersen, P. T., & Ocakli, H. (2014). Collision analysis of ships and jack-up rigs. In Proceedings of
the ICTWS 2014 7th International Conference on Thin-Walled Structures [ICTWS2014-1404]

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 Proceedings of the ICTWS 2014 7th International Conference on Thin-Walled Structures
ICTWS2014
28 September – 2 October 2014, Busan, Korea

ICTWS2014-1404

COLLISION ANALYSIS OF SHIPS AND JACK-UP RIGS

Shengming Zhang
Lloyd’s Register EMEA., Global Technology Centre,
UK

P Terndrup Pedersen Hasan Ocakli

Department of Mechanical Engineering Lloyd’s Register Asia,
Technical University of Denmark, Republic of Korea
Denmark

ABSTRACT
Ship collision with offshore installations is one of the key concerns in design and assess of platforms performance and safety.
This paper presents an analysis on collision energy and structural damage in ship and offshore platform collisions for various
collision scenarios. The platform or rig is treated as either rigid or flexible and its sensitivity on collision energy and structural
damage is studied. An application example where an ice-strengthened supply vessel collides against a Jack-up rig is analyzed and the
crushing resistance of the involved thin-walled structures is evaluated.

relevant collision conditions such as ship structural

1. INTRODUCTION arrangement, impact velocity, impact angle and position. It
will be shown that it is important to take into account the jack-
Offshore platforms and drilling rigs are constantly
up flexibility in order to estimate the impact energy
serviced by supply vessels during its operations. Collisions
more
between them are unavoidable. The key concern during design
accurately which is released for structural damage. Application
and operating of the structural system is to make sure that they
examples of vessels colliding to a jack-up rig are analysed and
have sufficient safety in case of collision incidents.
the crushing resistance of the thin-walled structures is
The basic impact design philosophy is that the offshore
evaluated.
structure should be able to withstand accidental conditions
from supply ships drifting out of control with a speed of 2 m/s.
2. ANALYSIS METHODS FOR COLLISION ENERGY
Such an impact may require major repair after the incident but
not lead to total collapse even in a storm with a return period The analysis methods for collision energy between ships
of one year. The size of traditional typical supply vessels is and offshore platforms were developed by the authors in
about 5,000 tonnes in displacement in the North Sea (Gjerde et references (Zhang 1999, Pedersen and Zhang 1998). The
al 1999). The size of supply vessels has increased in recent assumptions behind this calculation method are the platform
years. With the increase in vessel size the collision energy will natural period (typically about 8 s) which is larger than the
also increase. Thus the risk of damages in case of collisions duration of the initial force contact between the colliding
with supply vessels could be significant. Therefore, such risks vessel and the platform, and that the global displacement of
should be carefully assessed and reviewed. the topside of the jack-up is small until after the initial
The aim of the present study is to present an analysis on maximum contact forces between the colliding bodies is
collision energy and structural damage in ship and offshore achieved. The procedure is also based on an assumption of ship
jack-up rig collisions. An accurate assessment of damages to translations in the horizontal plane only. The crushing load-
the offshore rig is complicated by the problem of specifying the deflection behavior is approximately linear, and that the

1
structural response of the platform has a linear structural   
response. k s (a  b ), for  a   b  0
The colliding system can be approximated as a two-mass F    
system where one generalized mass represents the supply 0, for  a   b  0

vessel and the other represents the platform, as shown in Fig.
1. Thus, the following force-stiffness relations may represent
the platform behavior: Here k 11 , k 22 , k 12 , k 21 , k s are stiffness coefficients, and
 a is the displacement at the collision point of the supply
F  k 11b  k 12 p vessel.

In Pedersen and Jensen (1991), it is shown that at the end
 
Fp  k 21b  k 22  p   M p  p
of the collision where the velocities  a   b , the
where F is the collision force between the supply vessel and displacement (ξp) of the platform topside can be assumed to be
the platform, F p is the transmitted force acting on the small. Therefore, we get the generalized force at this moment:
k 21
generalized topside mass M p of the jack-up,  b is the Fp  F
k 11 
displacement of the collision point on a leg, and  p is the The impact impulse of the collision between the supply
displacement of the topside. vessel and the platform can be expressed as:

Ma  
I  [ ( 0)   a ]
Da

where,
1 1
Da  sin 2   cos 2  
1  max 1  may
1 [ yc sin   ( xc  xa ) cos  ]2
 2
1  ja Ra
and M a is the mass of the supply vessel. The radius of the
ship mass inertia around the centre of gravity is Ra , the
coordinate of the centre of gravity of the striking ship is
(x a ,0) , the coordinate of the impact point is (x c , y c ) , the
added mass coefficient for the surge motion is max and it is
taken 0.05, the added mass coefficient for the sway motion is
may and it is taken as 0.5 and the added mass coefficient of
moment for the rotation around the centre of the gravity is j a
and it is taken as 0.25 in this paper.
The impact impulse on the generalized platform mass can
be expressed as:
 k 21
I p  M p  p  I
k11
Figure 1. Simplified 2D model of a supply vessel impacting a
chord of a jack-up platform. At the end of the crushing, the velocity of the supply
vessel and the velocity of the platform at the collision point are
The interaction between the ship and the jack-up is equal. We get:
simplified as:  k 12 
a   
k 11 p

2
 The velocity of the topside of the platform is obtained as ks
 E platform  (E0  Es  E p )
  (0) k11  k s
p  
k 12 k M p Da 3. DAMAGE ANALYSIS AND EXAMPLES
 11
k 11 k 21 M a Let us consider an ice-strengthened supply vessel colliding
The velocity of the ship at the end of the collision can be with the leg of the jack-up rig in different locations of the ship
expressed as: at a velocity of V = 2 m/s in a direction normal to the colliding
 sin    ship side. The length of the supply vessel is 82.5m, the breadth
vax   (0) sin   ( (0)   a ) is 18.8m and the displacement is 5,000t. The jack-up rig is a
Da (1  max )
self-elevating drilling rig with a topside overall length of 84 m,
 cos   
width overall 90 m and depth 9.4m capable of operation in
v ax   (0) cos   ( (0)   a )
Da (1  m ay ) water depth up to 100m. The generalized mass of the jack-up
is 19700t which was determined from a calculation of the
y c sin   ( xc  x a ) cos   
lowest natural frequency of the jack-up using a beam model
a  2
( (0)   a )
Ra (1  j a ) Da where the fixity at the spud cans are estimated and the
where, flexibility at the clamping mechanism is determined from a
 FEA. The legs of the rig were modelled as equivalent
   ( 0) Timoshenko beams. The collision situation is illustrated in
 (0)   a  Fig. 2. Other collision scenarios can be found in NORSOK
k 12 k 21 M a
1 2004.
k 112 M p Da
The energy to be absorbed by the crushing of the supply
vessel and deformation of the jack-up rig is: Jack-up

Ec  E0  ( E s  E p )
V
where,
1 
E0  M [(1  max ) sin 2   (1  may ) cos2  ] (0) 2 is
2 a
the initial kinetic energy of the supply vessel,

1 M p  ( 0) 2 is the kinetic energy of
Ep  Figure 2. A supply vessel impacting a jack-up rig.
2 k 12 k 11 M p D a 2
(  ) Two collision cases were considered to show the effect of
k 11 k 21 M a
the structural flexibility on the impact energy; the jack-up rig
the jack-up topside at the end of the collision, was considered as rigid as well as flexible. For the flexible
case, the stiffness coefficients in Table 1 are determined from
1  1 the same beam model used for estimation of the generalized
E s  E0  M a  (0) 2 ( 
2 k12 k 21 Ma mass for the platform. The crushing stiffness ks refers to the
D a (1  2
)2
k11 M p D a results in Fig. 7. For different impact locations Fig. 3 shows
2 the total kinetic energy of the supply vessel just before impact,
) the energy released for crushing of ship and/or platform in the
k12 k 21 Ma
D a (1  ) case of a rigid platform and in the case of a flexible jack-up
2
k11 M p D a structure, and finally the elastic energy stored in global
is the kinetic energy of the supply vessel at the end of the deformations of the jack-up.
collision. Table 1. Stiffness coefficients for the flexible case
The energy to be dissipated by the crushing of the ship
structure and/or the jack-up rig is: Coefficients MN/m
k11 k11 34.5
E crush  (E0  E s  E p )
k11  k s k22 48.9
k12  k21 -27.8
The energy stored in the deformation of the platform is:

3
 ks 48.0 Figure 4. Collision energy to be absorbed by the 10,000t supply
vessel and the platform.

It is seen from the results in Fig. 3 that the energies For a central head on collision the energy released for
released for crushing are reduced considerably if the flexibility crushing of the bow and jack-up structure is found to be 5.88
of the jack-up rig is considered. For the case where the supply MJ for the 5000 t supply vessel and 10.25 MJ for 10 000 t
vessel is colliding sideways to the rig with impact midship, the vessel in the flexible case.
collision energy to be absorbed by structural crushing is 15MJ 3.2 Damage Analysis Methodology of Supply Vessels
for the rigid case which is equal to the total initial kinetic Colliding to a Jack-Up Rig
energy and it is 5.03MJ for the flexible case. The platform
absorbs 7MJ in elastic bending of the collided leg. The When the colliding ship types and sizes and the
remaining energy of 2.97MJ is stored in the supply vessel and distribution of energy released for crushing are known, the
the platform in kinetic form. So, it is important to consider the next step in a consequence analysis is to determine the
flexibility of the platform in ship-platform collision analysis. distribution of crushing damages to be absorbed by the ships
and to the jack-up structure.
The breakdown of damages between the involved
structures depends on the relative strength of the ship structure
and the impacted parts of the jack-up leg. If the ship is
assumed to be infinitely stiff all the energy has to be dissipated
by the jack-up structure. However, normally it will be much
more cost effective to take into account the finite strength of
the colliding ships. In this case both the striking ship and the
installation will undergo local damage and absorb energy.
When this is the situation the design is based on shared energy.
If the strength of the jack-up is so large that the major part of
the energy can be expected to be absorbed by the striking
vessel then the installation is said to be strength designed.
Thus, in order to determine the consequences of the energy
released for structural damage, it is necessary first to determine
Figure 3. Energy analysis for the 5,000t supply vessel impacts the relative strength of the involved structures.
the jack-up rig.
3.3 Local Damage to Supply Vessel
If he jack-up rig hit by a 10,000t vessel, the energies to be
absorbed by crushing of the vessel and the platform are The methodologies used in the following to determine the
calculated and presented in Fig.. 4. It is seen that for the case local capacity/damage of vessels were developed by the authors
where the supply vessel hits the rig sideway at midship, the in references (Zhang 1999 and Pedersen & Zhang 2000). Fig.
ship and jack-up will absorb 8.39MJ by crushing and the jack- 5 shows the deformation/damage modes of a cylinder crushing
up leg will store 11.68MJ by elastic bending. The remaining into the side of a supply vessel. The main deformation modes
energy of 9.93MJ is stored in the supply vessel and the in the side shell is plastic tension and it is folding and crushing
platform in kinetic form. in deck and bottom. Approximations for the force-
displacement relations for side shell can be expressed as:
4 H b
Fp   0t ( )( 1 )
3 b b
b1  b  b0
R
b0   , ( b0  R )
b
Approximations for the force-displacement relations for
the deck or for the outer or inner bottom can be expressed as:

1 1
Fd  1.262 0t1.83b0.67 0.5
 1.290 0t1.33 0.33
 b

4
where  0 is the flow stress of the materials (taking the energy by the ship is obtained as 20.8MJ and the maximum
crushing force is 44.9MN. The crushing forces for given
average of the yield stress and tensile strength), t is the
penetrations are considerably higher than those in the
thickness,  is the displacement (or penetration), H is the NORSOK 2004.This may be due to the present example ship is
contact height of side shell, b is half of the frame spacing and an ice-strengthened and longitudinally stiffened ship.
R is the radius of the cylinder. This absorbed energy (20.8MJ) by ship structures is larger
For ship bow crushing in head on collisions, simplified than the collision energy of 15MJ for the sideway collision of
procedures such as illustrated in Yamada and Pedersen (2008) the supply vessel impact with the jack-up leg (rigid case). This
can be applied to determine the force penetration relations for means that the ship has sufficient energy absorption capability
ship bows. before rupturing of the side shell. So, in this example, the
supply vessel is still intact and floating.

Figure 6. Collision between the jack-up rig and the supply

vessel.

Figure 5. Illustration of the leg of a jack-up crushing into the

midship of a supply vessel.
Now we analyze the damage caused to a supply vessel
colliding to a Jack-up rig. During design and operation of
offshore platforms, one of the concerns is if the vessel is still
intact and floating in case a collision occurs. Sinking of the
vessel could cause massive damages, such as damages to the
cables, pipelines under/around the platform and loss of lives.
Fig. 6 illustrates a side collision scenario between a 5,000t
an ice-strengthened supply vessel and a jack-up leg (the
drawings are not scaled, detailed scantlings were omitted due
to confidentiality). The diameter of the leg is assumed as 1m, Figure 7. Force-penetration curve of the supply vessel crushing
and the cylinder leg is so rigid that it crushes into the ship onto the jack-up leg (rigid case).
side. The force-penetration curve and absorbed energy-
penetration curves are calculated and presented in Fig. 7 and
8, respectively.
The critical penetration point for the ship side is defined
as the rupture of the side shell. At this point the absorbed

5
Figure 8. Energy-penetration curve of the supply vessel
crushing onto the jack-up leg.

3.4 Local Damage to Jack-Up Legs

Figure 10. Central load on bracing (Load case A).
The methodology used in the following to determine the
If we make the conservative assumption that the secondary
local capacity of the jack-up legs against ship impact loads is a
bracing does not exist and that also the diagonal bracings are
simplified approach based on stepwise determination of plastic
ineffective then we can determine the lower bound for the
hinges.
energy absorbed in the horizontal by membrane yielding
Fig. 9 shows a part of the leg of the considered jack-up rig
simply as:
for collision analysis. For a complete analysis this portion of
E D   y AL
the leg has to be analysed for the five indicated load cases A to
E.
where ΔL is the plastic elongation of the bracing:

L  L  ( L2  4u T2 ) 1 / 2

where uT is the plastic lateral displacement, i.e. total

displacement minus elastic displacement. It should be noted
that the bending phase of the deformation is neglected. The
lateral collision forces may be written as:

Pc  2 y A sin uT
or
u
Pc  2 y A T
L/2

Of course, there is a practical limit to the elongation of a

bracing before fracture occurs. If we take this limit to be 5%,
the yield stress of the bracing material to be 500 MN/m2, the
Figure 9. Part of jack-up leg with five load cases. cross sectional area of the bracing to be 0.0255m2 and the
bracing length L = 12m then the maximum energy absorption
3.4.1 Load case A. Bow collisions. limit in load case A is

Let us as a first example consider load case A which is a ED = 7.65 MJ

bow collision on a horizontal bracing member, see Fig. 10.
Firstly, we assume that the bow of the colliding vessel is For load case A, only 5.88 MJ is available for crushing for
infinitely stiff and the impact is against the mid-part with the a 5 000 tons supply vessel and 10.25 MJ is available for
largest contact area and therefore, the largest bow collision crushing for a 10,000 tons supply vessel. Therefore, the
force. bracing has sufficient energy absorption capacity for the 5000

6
tons supply vessel in spite of the fact that we conservatively In Amdahl et al (2012) an expression for the force R
have assumed that the bow is infinitely stiff. which results in flattening of a circular tube with diameter D
With the large tension forces in the horizontal bracing the and wall thickness t is given as:
1.925
adjacent chords are subjected to localized forces equal to the H
yield stress multiplied by the cross sectional area of the t2 D H w 3.5 4 1 N 3 1/ 2
R y ( 22  1.2 )( d ) D ( (1  (1  ) )
bracings, .i.e. P = 12.8 MN, see Fig. 11. The effect of this load 4 t D D 3 4 Np
on the chords can be analysed by neglecting all other bracings
and applying the load at midpoint of the clamped – clamped where wd is the indentation and H is the contact height. The
chord of double bay length using a simple three hinge last term in the expression takes into account the effect of the
structural model. The chord cross section is shown in Fig. 12. axial force N in the tubular member. The expression given
With the actual scantlings of the chord it is found that this load above is in accordance with the load flattening curves given in
can be accommodated without collapse. NORSOK.

Figure 12. Cross-section of chord.

In the present case the stresses due to axial loads on the
chord are small compared to the yield stress and the buckling
Figure 11. Transverse loading on cords in load case A. stress Np and it is ignored in the following example.
If the chord depicted in Fig. 12 is approximated by the
3.4.2. Load cases B-E. Ship drifting to chords tubular part only and the chord material has a yield stress of
In order to investigate whether the strength of the 700 MN/m2 , a chord diameter of 1 m and an thickness t =
chords is sufficient to resist the collision forces arising from 0.053 m then we obtain the maximum indentation:
the four load cases B-E, we shall study the strength of the
chord modelled as a clamped – clamped beam column with a Wd1 =0.134 m
length equal to two bays, i.e. L = 9.2 m. Thus, we shall be
conservative and neglect all the bracings at the mid bay. Fig. 13 presented the force-penetration curves for both the
Furthermore we shall introduce the conservative assumption supply vessel and the chord and Fig. 14 presented the absorbed
that the chord cross-section shown in Fig. 12 only consists of energy-penetration curves for both the supply vessel and the
the tubular part. chord.
From the analysis of the force – penetration of the midship The results from these figures show that at the maximum
section of the 5,000 tons supply vessel, we know that when the crushing force of Pmax =44.9 MN, the energy absorbed by the
ship drifts sideways into the chord the maximum force will be: supply vessel is 20.8MJ; and the energy absorbed by the chord
of the jack-up rig is 4.67MJ and the total crushing energy is
Pmax =44.9 MN 25.47MJ.
This is under the assumption that there is enough collision
This force may cause a localized deformation of the energy and the result rupture of the side shell of the supply
circular member. The energy which can be absorbed by vessel. However, the collision energy for crushing of the supply
localized deformation of the chord is expected to be small. vessel and the jack-up structures is limited as presented in the
Therefore we shall show, in the following example, that in this Section 3.1.
case the force exerted to the drifting ship hull is so large that As shown in Section 3.1, the available collision energy for
the major energy absorption will take place in the ship side. crushing is 5.03MJ. Therefore, the actual damages to the side
of the 5,000 tons supply vessel and to the chord of the jack-up

7
rig will be much smaller. From Fig. 13 and 14, we obtain that
the energy absorbed by the supply vessel is 4.95MJ and the
energy absorbed by the chord is only 0.08MJ. The indentation
to the chord is:

Wd2 =0.005 m

A dent of this magnitude is estimated to reduce the plastic

moment Mp of the chord only by an insignificant amount
according to NORSOK, 2004. That is, such an indentation will
not jeopardize the safety of the jack-up in a one year storm.
All results of this example on collision energies, collision
forces and penetrations can be summarized as in Fig. 15 for
easy reading.
Figure 15. Force-penetration and energy-penetration curves for
crushing of supply vessel and the chord of a jack-up leg.

3.4.3 Overall jack-up strength and stability.

As a final check of the ability of the rig to sustain the
impact loads, the overall strength of the transversely impacted
leg must be checked as well as the overturning moment must
be ensured to be acceptable. Simplified expressions for the
overturning moment in the worst case of central impacts can
be found in Pedersen and Jensen (1991).

4. CONCLUSION REMARKS
Figure 13. Force-penetration curves for sideway crushing of
supply vessel and the chord of jack-up leg (note: penetrations The aim of this study has been to illustrate a simplified
of supply vessel were shown in negative values for the graphic procedure for analysis of the ability of jack-up rigs to sustain
purpose). operational and accidental impact loads from supply vessels
serving these offshore structures.
An accurate assessment of damages to offshore
installations caused by ship impact loads is complicated by the
large amount of scenarios to be studied. These include various
ship sizes and structures, impact locations, impact velocities
and angles, etc. Therefore, even if comprehensive, time
consuming, numerical analysis procedures exist, see Storheim
& Amdahl 2014, then simplified procedures are needed which
are easy to apply and has sufficient accuracy to ensure the
ability of the installation to resist the impact loads associated
with normal operating conditions and accidental conditions
such as supply vessels drifting out of control against the
installation.
The focus of the paper has been on the capability of a large
Figure 14. Energy-penetration curves for sideway crushing of jack-up rig to sustain the accidental impacts from a
supply vessel and the chord of a jack-up leg. longitudinally stiffened, ice-strengthened 5,000 tons supply
vessel. It is shown that due to the flexibility of the jack-up rig
only part of the initially available kinetic energy is released for
crushing and that the collision energy is accommodated either
by crushing of bracings in the jack-up legs in the case of bow

8
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Amdahl, J.; Watam, R.; Hu, Z. & Holmås,T., 2012, Broad side
ship collision with jacket legs: Examination of NORSOK N-
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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