Global Fatigue Assessment of a Decommissioned Jacket Platform for a Sustainable Reuse as an Offshore Wind Turbine

When the offshore oil and gas supplies exhaust, offshore platforms must be decommissioned and removed. The present thesis highlights the importance of evaluating the possibility of reuse of decommissioned offshore jacket platforms for offshore wind energy. In order to shift to the new structure, the topside must be removed from the substructure and a wind turbine can be installed in its place. The feasibility of this project was investigated using a finite element analysis software called Sesam. To study fatigue life in offshore structures, an exhaustive review of the background and state of the art was done. A finite element model was created by the means of Sesam and two different fatigue analysis approaches were applied and compared. In the end, an analysis methodology is suggested for the structural fatigue analysis of offshore wind turbine structures based on international standards, addressing the industry’s need to account for the combined effect of wind and hydrodynamic loads in these type of structures.