Axial compressive residual ultimate strength of circular tube after lateral collision

Abstract The tubes which are applied in jacket platforms as the supporting structure might be collided by supply vessels. Such kind of impact will lead to plastic deformation on tube members. As a result, the ultimate strength of tubes will decrease compared to that of intact ones. In order to make a decision on whether to repair or replace the members, it is crucial to know the residual strength of the tubes. After being damaged by lateral impact, the simply supported tubes will definitely loss a certain extent of load carrying capacity under uniform axial compression. Therefore, in this paper, the relationship between the residual ultimate strength of the damaged circular tube by collision and the energy dissipation due to lateral impact is investigated. The influences of several parameters, such as the length, diameter and thickness of the tube and the impact energy, on the reduction of ultimate strength are investigated. A series of numerical simulations are performed using nonlinear FEA software LS-DYNA. Based on simulation results, a non-dimensional parameter is introduced to represent the degree of damage of various size of tubes after collision impact. By applying this non-dimensional parameter, a simplified formula has been derived to describe the relationship between axial compressive residual ultimate and lateral impact energy and tube parameters. Finally, by comparing with the allowable compressive stress proposed in API rules (RP2A-WSD A P I, 2000), the critical damage of tube due to collision impact to be repaired is proposed.