This book attempts to provide readers with an overall idea of various types of offshore platform geometries. It covers the various environmental loads encountered by these structures, a detailed description of the fundamentals of structural dynamics in a class-room style, estimate of damping in offshore structures and their applications in the preliminary analysis and design. Basic concepts of structural dynamics are emphasized through simple illustrative examples and exercises. Design methodologies and guidelines, which are FORM based concepts are explained through a few applied example structures. Each chapter also has tutorials and exercises for self-learning. A dedicated chapter on stochastic dynamics will help the students to extend the basic concepts of structural dynamics to this advanced domain of research. Hydrodynamic response of offshore structures with perforated members is one of the recent research applications, which is found to be one of the effective manner of retrofitting offshore structures. Results of recent research, validated by the experimental and numerical studies are presented to update of the readers. Integration of the concepts of structural dynamics with the FORM-evolved design of offshore structures is a unique approach used in this book. The book will prove useful to the practicing and consulting offshore structural engineers, as also to students and researchers working in the field.
Srinivasan Chandrasekaran is a faculty member of the department of Ocean Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India. He has teaching, research and industrial experience of about 23 years during which he has supervised many sponsored research projects and offshore consultancy assignments both in India and abroad. His areas of current research are dynamic analysis and design of offshore platforms, development of geometric forms of compliant offshore structures for ultra-deep water oil exploration and production, sub-sea engineering, rehabilitation and retrofitting of offshore platforms, structural health monitoring of ocean structures, seismic analysis and design of structures and risk analyses and reliability studies of offshore and petroleum engineering plants. He has also been a visiting fellow under the invitation of Ministry of Italian University Research to University of Naples Federico II, Italy, for a period of two years during which he conducted research on advanced nonlinear modeling and analysis of structures under different environment loads with experimental verifications. He has published 110 research papers in international journals and refereed conferences organized by professional societies around the world. He has also authored three textbooks which are quite popular among the graduate students of civil and ocean engineering. He is a member of many national and international professional bodies and delivered many invited lectures and keynote addresses in the international conferences, workshops and seminars organized in India and abroad.
