FATIGUE RELIABILITY OF TLP TETHER SYSTEMS CONSIDERING THE EFFECT OF INSPECTION AND REPAIR

This paper presents a probabilistic procedure for estimating the fatigue reliability of the tension leg platform tether system considering the effect of inspection and repair. Among uncertainties accounted for are those in the long-term stochastic load process, the fatigue strength, the initial crack size and the reliability of the inspection method. The approach includes a possibility to account for the correlation between the failure functions of different tether joints, and non-uniform loading along the tether. However, the tethers are assumed identically loaded.