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Human Factors

Feasibility of Production, Loading and Storage Systems for the North Aleutian Basin

This is a Joint Industry Project (JIP) with five oil companies. The purpose of the project was to study the safety, feasibility, and cost of production systems required to produce oil and gas in Outer Continental Shelf Lease Sale 92. It examined the feasibility of both steel jackets and concrete gravity platforms, as well as a tanker based floating production, storage and loading system with subsea completion and marine riser.

Rig Mooring Reliability

The development of a handbook or guide for MMS operations personnel to assess the integrity of drill rig mooring systems. The guide will be both practical and analytical. Robert Walden of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will compile and edit the practical section which will address tests and inspections of mooring components and discuss equipment service life. David Dillon will discuss the strengths and limitations of system loadings. In addition, he will present a simplified example analysis which operations personnel can use to verify the adequacy of mooring designs.

Fitness-for-Service Criteria for Assessing the Significance of Fatigue Cracks in Offshore Structures

The objective was to develop guidelines for evaluating defects found during in-service inspection of offshore structures. The approach is based on fracture mechanics methods where the key ingredient in the assessment methodology is a semi- empirical model, relating crack growth rate to anticipated operating conditions. Various models developed for predicting growth rates of cracks under random loading will be studied by comparing analytical predictions with experimental results on growth of surface cracks in representative offshore steel weldments.

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