Maximum bending moment capacity of circular perforated offshore steel tubular members

• Published in: Thin-walled structures 2022-01, Vol.170, p.108556, Article 108556
• Main Authors: Hernández, Irving D., Vaz, Murilo A., Cyrino, Julio C.R., Martinez, Jorge L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Maximum bending moment capacity; Perforation damage; Tubular structures
• ISSN: 0263-8231; 1879-3223
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tws.2021.108556

Offshore steel tubular structures may experience perforations during their lifespan due to effects of the corrosive marine environment, which leads to deterioration of their strength capacity and lifetime shortening. There is a lack of procedures to quantify the structural capacity loss in view of the damage dimensions and geometrical characteristics of the tubular members. In this work, the maximum bending moment capacity of circular perforated steel tubular structures is evaluated experimentally and numerically. The effects of the magnitude of the perforation and the diameter-to-thickness ratio are discussed. In a first phase, reduced scale experimental tests and numerical simulations are developed considering tubular structures under pure bending moment load through a four-point configuration. Subsequently, a parametric analysis is conducted employing a simplified numerical model, then a design expression is adjusted and compared with numerical predictions and experimental measures to determine its reliability. The numerical model and the proposed expression showed absolute errors below 3% in relation to the experimental measures. Thus, the proposed expression can be adopted as an alternative criterion to assist in decision-making for supervision, repair or replacement of perforated tubular structures subjected to bending moment. •A numerical model is developed to represent the four-point bending test configuration from experiments.•A double face-centered design of experiments is employed to map the damage levels’ effects on the bending moment capacity prediction.•Analysis of variance is conducted to evaluate the significance of the parameters on the bending moment capacity prediction.•A response surface methodology is used to propose a design expression for assessing the maximum bending moment capacity.