Probabilistic fatigue analysis of marine structures using the univariate dimension-reduction method

Probabilistic fatigue analysis of offshore structures requires the numerical simulation of a huge number of loading cases to compute the long-term multi-dimensional integral associated to the fatigue damage assessment. This paper proposes the implementation of the univariate dimension-reduction method developed by Rahman and Xu [1] in order to compute the long-term fatigue damage more efficiently. This method is particularly attractive because it reduces significantly the number of simulations by decomposing the N-dimensional integral associated to expected long-term fatigue damage assessment into the sum of N one-dimensional integrals. In addition, this paper compares the univariate-dimension reduction method with the brute force direct integration methodology and other methods based on Taylor expansions, such as perturbation approach and asymptotic expansion method discussed by Low and Cheung [2]. Two comprehensive examples are included to show the effectiveness of the method. At first, the performance of the univariate dimension-reduction method is evaluated by assessing the fatigue damage of a theoretical structure represented by a single stress response amplitude operator (RAO). Then, in order to show a case of practical application, the fatigue damage is evaluated for a Steel Lazy Wave Riser (SLWR) connected to an FPSO in a water depth of 2200 m.