Structural Design & Analysis
Structural Design and Analysis is the youngest specialization focusing on mastering and advancing your knowledge when applied for design and analysis of steel and composite floating structures used by the maritime, offshore, dredging and renewable energy industries.
Think here about floating wind structures, tidal energy structures, “Pioneering Spirit” of Allseas, “Prelude” an FLNG of Shell, or the “Sleipnir” a new generation semi-submersible largest crane vessel in the world which is designed for worldwide offshore heavy lifting by HMC. But before these structures can be designed and analysed a lot of new knowledge is needed.
Our team is formed by experts in structural design and analysis of floating structures. We operate and use the Mega-Hexapod – a unique test device capable to reproduce any loading being experienced by structural elements in ship and offshore structures. We enjoy research and education. Most probably you will be directly involved in our research projects and you will graduate with co-supervision of one of our industrial partners. Examples of our recent research are: multiaxial fatigue, structural health monitoring, structural response to sloshing, climate change effects on structural lifetimes, and hydroelastic response of composite propellers. Our new research program is on an ultra-large flexible floating platform supporting solar panels and producing a green fuel.
The past few years we have developed for you several new 5 ECTS courses dedicated to offshore structures:
1. MT44030 (Q1) - Structural Design and Analysis (Torsional and shear response)
2. MT44010 (Q2) - Non-metallic materials
3. MT44085 (Q2) - Buckling & Ultimate Strength
4. OE44085 (Q4) - Fatigue & Fracture
5. MT44090 (Q5) - Fluid-Structure Interaction
All this courses include assignments which allow students to apply the knowledge directly. The grades are based on assignment reports to be explained in an oral exam which can be taken outside the exam periods. Hence, no written exams and no stress - just your study time. This allows you for better planning of your study.
The core curriculum for structural design and analysis consists of 5 subjects totaling 25 ECTS. Including this into the offshore core curriculum gives 100 ECTS including the thesis. This leaves 20 ECTS for elective courses. The core structural design and analysis are as follows:
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The course provides an introduction to floating structure types used in the offshore oil, gas and renewables industry and an introduction to mooring systems for floating structures.
The goal of this course is to familiarize the students with analysis techniques used in research and in the industry.
Central to the course are the equations of motions and the stochastic character of input (waves) and responses for single and multibody systems. -
The goal of this course is to introduce various dynamic models of structures and to acquaint the students with the main ideas and methods of structural dynamics. The course prepares students to carry out dynamic response computations on structures that have distributed masses.
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Fatigue is a cyclic loading induced local, progressive, structural damage mechanism introducing fracture and governing limit state for marine (i.e. fixed and floating offshore) structures, since continuous waves as well as repeating wave impacts dominate the mechanical loading system. To be able to assess the marine structure {integrity, longevity} in this matter.
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The loading of marine structures consist of {normal, shear} force and {bending, torsion} moment contributions. Torsion becomes particularly important in case of staggered cargo loading conditions and operation in quartering seas, introducing a shear {strain, stress}- and even normal {strain, stress} response in the beam (like) structural members. To be able to establish and calculate the marine structure torsion loading induced response.
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The goal of this course is to assess reliability of a structure subject to ultimate limit state. Hence, first a solid understanding of the ultimate limit state is developed, after which reliability methods are applied to the limit state. A link to reliability based design is made.