Study on the Aerodynamic Interference of Wind Loads on Jack-up Platforms

Wind load is the primary load to be controlled for jack-up platforms;the current regulations adopt the area projection method to compute the wind loads without taking into account the influence of aerodynamic interference,which tends to be conservative.Taking the self-developed 122 m(400 ft) jack-up platform as the example,the interference factors IFs under various wind directions are obtained through wind tunnel experiments.Based on this,numerical simulations are also performed through solving the RANS equations by k-e turbulent model to study the aerodynamic interference phenomenon of wind loads.The numerically obtained IFs agree well with the experimental results and the influence of aerodynamic interference of wind loads on jack-up platforms is revealed.