A hydro-structural analysis program for TLPS

The TLP configuration in this paper comes from the case study of the ISSC Derived Loads Committee I.2 in 1985. Two models, Model 1 and Model 2, are created aiming at developing a computational tool to handle hydro-dynamic and structural aspects together to help the TLP designer. Another objective is to generate relevant information for a non-linear static local stress analysis of TLP components from a dynamic hydro-structural global analysis. Model 2 is developed for LUSAS, a general purpose, well established, FE software, to validate the in-house program DCATLP. Model 1 and Model 2 are purposely made slightly different in the tether modelling so that the non-linear formulations in DCATLP to treat a TLP as a coupled system with the hull and tethers can be verified with a straightforward linear step-by-step dynamic analysis in LUSAS. The code in DCATLP has advanced features to account for some complex aspects of TLPs, such as compliant characteristics. The results from DCATLP can be directly used in the reliability based structural design of TLP components and subsequent optimisation studies.