Parametric study on offshore jacket launching

Platform structures are commonly utilized for various purposes including offshore drilling, processing and support of offshore operations. Jacket type structures are attractive in relatively shallow water regions. A jacket is a supporting structure for deck facilities stabilized by leg piles through the seabed. The size of a jacket is dependent on deck size, pile dimensions and environmental loads. In a jacket design, operational and environmental loads are very important and must be investigated intensively to secure the stability of structures during their operation life, and installation phase as well. To confirm the stability, several analyses including in-place, fatigue, dynamic, load-out, transportation, lifting, and launching are performed. As the jacket weight and dimensions become large, a launching technique is applied to install the jacket. The launching analysis needs to consider quite a number of parameters including environmental conditions, launch barge specification, ballast, trim angle, local member integrity, etc. Due to the complexity of the operation, there is not a straightforward guideline or procedure for analysis. In this paper, a general procedure for analysis with various conditions and launching criteria are discussed and investigated. The effects of parameters are closely examined by numerical modeling.