Prediction and mitigation of out-of-plane welding distortion of a typical block in fabrication of a semi-submersible lifting and disassembly platform

Out-of-plane welding distortions of block structures during fabrication of offshore structure will significantly influence its dimensional accuracy and production schedule. Taking a B514 block of a semi-submersible lifting and disassembly platform as research object, typical welded joints and their welding conditions were summarized based on actual welding procedure specification (WPS). Effective thermal elastic plastic (TEP) finite element (FE) analysis with parallel computation technology was carried out to examine thermal-mechanical response. Welding inherent deformations, which are considered as the elementary cause of welding distortion, were then evaluated. With welding inherent deformations as mechanical loading, elastic finite element (FE) analysis was then employed to predict dimensional accuracy of examined B514 block, which has a good agreement with measurement data. In order to ensure the fabrication accuracy with less out-of-plane welding distortion, inverse deformation approach was applied to reduce the out-of-plane welding distortion, and influence of welding sequence on out-of-plane welding distortion was also examined. Both mitigation practices have obvious effect on dimensional accuracy of examined B514 block, while corresponding mechanical mechanisms were also clarified.