International Journal of Fatigue 118 (2019) 162–175

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International Journal of Fatigue

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijfatigue

A novel spectral moments equivalence based lumping block method for T

efficient estimation of offshore structural fatigue damage
⁎
Xiancang Song, Shuqing Wang
College of Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, PR China

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This paper provides a novel lumping block equivalence method, termed as spectral moments equivalence (SME)
Offshore platform based method, to improve the efficiency of fatigue assessment in preliminary design stage. In the newly SME
Fatigue assessment method, an equivalent equation of representative sea state’s spectral wave energy and original sea state’s spectral
Lumping block method wave energy is set up in the fatigue equivalence viewpoint. The relations of wave parameters and wave spectral
Wave spectral moments
moments are introduced into the SME method to determine the equivalent significant wave height and up-
Fatigue equivalence principle
crossing wave period of the representative sea state. A key feature of the SME method is that the effect of S-N
curve’s slope and quantity of sea state in lumping block is incorporated into the equivalent formulae to make the
method applicable to different lumping block partitions and fatigue curves. In addition, the SME method also has
advantage of preserving the stochastic characteristics of sea states. Cumulative fatigue damage of fixed and
floating offshore platforms are generated to verify the validity and applicability of the SME method. Numerical
results indicate that the SME method not only yields the most accurate fatigue assessment but also has robustness
to block partitions and offshore structures.

1. Introduction
The offshore platforms are exposed to a multiple of sea states during
their service life which may cause seriously accumulative fatigue da-
mage and lead the offshore structure to fatigue failure even if the
stresses in the critical regions smaller than the elastic limit [1].
Nowadays, the fatigue damage has become a key design criterion for
offshore platforms and much attention must be paid to accurate as-
sessment of fatigue damage.
Certainly, if accuracy is all that is desired, one may always resort to
time domain fatigue assessment method [2]. The time domain method
can take the effect of system’s nonlinear characteristics and the non-
Gaussian excitation into consideration through the coupled dynamic
analysis directly, and the stress response obtained from the coupled
dynamic analysis can be converted into a set of stress ranges together
with corresponding cycles by means of rain-flow counting algorithm
[3]. The fatigue damage can be estimated in a straight forward manner
by summing the individual fatigue damage caused by each counted
stress range according to the Palmgren-Miner (P-M) accumulative rule
[4] and the applicable fatigue curve [5]. Therefore, the result of the
time domain fatigue assessment method is remarkably accurate and it is
usually considered to be a benchmark against other fatigue assessment
methods [6]. However, to get a reliable fatigue assessment under long-
term wave condition, the simulation duration should last long enough
to cover stochastic uncertainties adequately for every short-term sea
state and the coupled dynamic analysis should be repeated several
hundred times to include all the original sea states in a wave scatter
diagram [7,8]. Therefore, the time domain method is clearly compu-
tationally expensive and this is the major impediment for its application
in engineering practice.
To reduce the computational effort of time domain fatigue assess-
ment, a common practice, as recommended by design code, is to lump
the original sea states into blocks and uses the representative sea states
to estimate structural fatigue damage [9]. In this way, a large number of
original sea states in the lumping block can be replaced by a re-
presentative sea state, and the repeated times of coupled dynamic
analysis and stress range counting can be reduced drastically. To de-
termine the equivalent parameters of representative sea state, including
the significant wave height, mean up-crossing wave period and occur-
rence probability, four kinds of lumping block equivalence methods
have been developed. The first kind of method is that the representative
wave parameters are determined from the wave parameters of original
sea states directly and ignore the stochastic nature of sea state, such as
DNV and Sheehan methods. According to the DNV code [9], the fatigue
damage resulted from a representative sea state should not be smaller
than that contributed from the original sea states in the lumping block.

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: shuqing@ouc.edu.cn (S. Wang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijfatigue.2018.09.016
Received 25 July 2018; Received in revised form 16 September 2018; Accepted 20 September 2018
Available online 21 September 2018
0142-1123/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
X. Song, S. Wang
Referring to DNV-SESAM software [10], the representative wave height
is set to a wave height interval larger than the largest wave height in the
lumping block and representative wave period is set to a half wave
period interval larger than the averaging of wave period encompassed
by the lumping block. The method related to DNV-SESAM software is
referred as DNV method in this paper. Different from DNV method,
Sheehan et al. [11] chosen the largest wave height in lumping block as
the representative wave height and set the probabilistic average of
wave period in lumping block to be the representative wave period.
Obviously, the representative wave heights determined from DNV and
Sheehan methods are much larger than the original ones in the lumping
block, and it would overestimate structural fatigue damage sig-
nificantly.
The second kind of method is that the original sea states with same
wave height/period are partitioned into a lumping block and the cor-
responding representative wave parameter is determined based on a
specific principle. Kühn [12] and Mittendorf [13] partitioned the sea
states with save wave height into a block and determined the re-
presentative wave period based on the probabilistic average of wave
frequencies principle or the probabilistic average of wave periods
principle, respectively. Burton [14] lumped the sea states with same
wave period into a block, and determine the representative wave height
based on a correlation between wave height, sea state’s occurrence
probability and fatigue curve’s slope. It obvious that the wave para-
meters of representative sea state can be easily determined for a given
wave height/period from the methods above. However, the methods
cannot be applicable to the lumping block consisted of sea states with
different wave heights/periods, and the accuracy of the methods may
be very poor if lumping block encompasses a wide range of wave
height/period. To make the methods applicable to different block
partitions, Jia [15] employed the correlation adopted in Burton method
to determine the representative wave height and utilized the prob-
abilistic average of period principle adopted in Mittendorf method to
calculate the representative wave period. It should be mentioned that
Burton and Jia methods are both related to S-N curve’s slope, and their
applicability to two-segment S-N curve need a further investigation.
The third kind of method is proposed in the viewpoint of fatigue
equivalence. Referring to the Passon and Branner method [16], a
pseudo fatigue damage matrix is first evaluated by means of spectral
method or time domain method, and then a functional description of
fatigue damage distribution over wave height/period is established.
Preserving the distribution of wave height/period, the corresponding
parameter of the representative sea state can be determined by inter-
polating the definition of fatigue damage function. A similar fatigue
damage function over wave height/period can be found in Low and
Cheung’s research [17], and the function assumes that the influence of
wave height and wave period on fatigue damage can be approximately
decoupled. It is noteworthy that the equivalent wave parameters de-
termined from the methods may be accurate, but the equivalence pro-
cedure is pretty complicated, especially that a pseudo fatigue damage
matrix should be calculated in advance. Furthermore, the fatigue da-
mage function established for a specific structure may be not robust to
other kind of structures.
The four kind of method is that the equivalent wave parameters are
determined from the wave energy of representative sea state. Seidel
[18] derived a compact equation to estimate wave induced fatigue
loads on mono-pile wind turbines under the frequency domain con-
sideration. It assumed that the wave energy spectrum was constant and
the response spectrum was narrowband for the relevant range close to
structural first natural frequency and the relation between the re-
presentative sea state’s wave energy and original sea state’s wave en-
ergy was established in the viewpoint of fatigue damage loads
equivalence. According to this equation, the equivalent spectral energy
of lumping block can be easily determined and it can give excellent
results for tower bottom of the mono-pile wind turbines. However, its
applicability to other kinds of offshore structure needs a further study.
163
International Journal of Fatigue 118 (2019) 162–175
Song et al. [19] proposed an innovative lumping block equivalence
method based on wave energy equivalence principle. In the method, the
spectral moments of representative sea state are set to be weighted
average spectral moments of original sea states. The representative
wave period was determined from the relation of wave period and
spectral moments, and the representative wave height was obtained by
reversing wave spectrum together with wave energy of representative
sea state. Studies proved that the method was robust, computationally
affordable, and accurate within engineering expectations. However, the
accuracy of this method may become poor if the lumping block en-
compasses a wide range of wave period for it can’t fully consider the
critical fatigue damage contributed from benign and harsh sea states in
the lumping block.
From the above description, one can find that the existing lumping
block equivalence methods have many limitations and disadvantages,
including significant overestimation of fatigue damage, lack of theo-
retical motivation, complicated equivalence procedure, and no robust-
ness to fatigue curve and/or structure. There is still a great need to
develop an accurate lumping block equivalence method with direct
physical meanings for efficient estimation of offshore structural fatigue
damage.
The primary objective of this article is to develop a novel lumping
block equivalence method in the viewpoint of fatigue equivalence for
efficient estimation of the wave induced fatigue damage in preliminary
design stage. The newly developed method, named as spectral moments
equivalence (SME) based method, establishes a correlation between the
wave spectral energy and fatigue damage by incorporating the effect of
S-N curve’s slope directly, and set up a novel equivalent equation be-
tween the spectral wave energy of representative sea state and the
spectral wave energy of original sea states in the fatigue equivalence
viewpoint. The relations of wave parameters and wave spectral mo-
ments are further introduced to determine the equivalent significant
wave height and up-crossing period of representative sea state. For the
equivalent wave parameters are determined based on the spectral
moments equivalence, the SME method is capable of preserving the
stochastic characteristics of original sea states. At the same time, the
SME method can be applicable to different block partitions, offshore
structures and fatigue curves. In contrast with the conventional
methods, the newly developed method has direct physical meanings
and clear theoretical motivations. To this end, the reminder of this
paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the preliminaries of the
fatigue damage assessment are reviewed briefly. Details of conventional
lumping block equivalence methods and the proposed SME method are
presented in Sections 3 and 4, respectively. In Section 5, the numerical
model and the environmental conditions are introduced, and the cu-
mulative fatigue damage of fixed and floating offshore platform are
generated and compared in Section 6. Finally, the conclusions drawn
from this work are presented in Section 7.
2. Preliminaries of fatigue damage assessment
In this section, preliminaries of fatigue damage assessment, in-
cluding potential theory, Morison equation, wave spectrum, rain-flow
counting method, S-N/T-N curve and P-M cumulative rule, are re-
viewed briefly.
2.1. Potential theory
The hydrodynamic load on large-scaled structure, such as pontoon
and column of semi-submersible platform (SEMI), is common evaluated
based on the three-dimension potential theory under ideal fluid as-
sumption. According to the linear superposition principle, the total
velocity potential Φ of fluid can be decomposed into three components
as follows [20,21]
Φ(x , y, z , t ) = ΦI (x , y, z , t ) + ΦS (x , y, z , t ) + ΦR (x , y, z , t ) (1)
X. Song, S. Wang International Journal of Fatigue 118 (2019) 162–175

where ΦI , ΦS and ΦR are incident, scattering and radiation potentials.

The velocity potential should satisfy Laplace governing equation within
the fluid domain and subject to the corresponding boundary conditions
[22].
The hydrodynamic load can be obtained by integrating the linear-
ized pressure over wet surface of structure, and the six components of
first-order hydrodynamic loads can be given as

6
⎧⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤⎫
Fk = ρRe ⎢iωae−iωt
⎨⎢
∬ (ϕI + ϕS ) nj ds⎥ + ⎢∑ iωξj e−iωt ∬ ϕRj nj ds⎥ ⎬
⎩⎣ s0 ⎥
⎦ ⎢
⎣ j=1 s0 ⎥
⎦⎭
(2)
where s0 is the mean wet surface of structure; ρ is the density of fluid; ϕI
and ϕS are the spatial parts of incident and scattering potentials, re-
Fig. 1. Illustration of wave spectrum discretization.
spectively. ϕRj is the spatial part of unit-amplitude radiation potential in
the jth degree of freedoms (DOF) and nj (j = 1, 2, ⋯, 6) is the outward
unit normal vector pointed positively into structure surface. Tp = 1.407(1−0.287lnγ )1/4Tz (7)
By discretizing the wave spectrum into N number of components
2.2. Morison equation Sηη (ωn )·Δω, as illustrated in Fig. 1, the relation between the wave
spectrum and the amplitude of wave components can be approximated
The hydrodynamic load on slender structure, such as braces of by following expression [15].
jacket platform, is usually expressed by the Morison equation in terms
of the relative fluid-structure velocities and accelerations, and the an = 2Sηη (ωn )Δω n = 1, 2, ⋯, N (8)
Morison equation for a circular cross section can be expressed as [23]
The water surface elevation and particle kinematics of an irregular
1 πD 2 πD 2 wave can be generated from the wave spectrum based on linear su-
Fh = CD ρD (u−x ̇) |u−x |̇ + CM ρ ̇ Cm ρ
u− x¨
2 4 4 (3) perposition of the wave components, and yields
where Fh is the hydrodynamic load on structure with per unit length in N
⎧ η (t ) = ∑n = 1 an cos[(ωn − 1 + χ Δω) t + εn ]
normal direction of axis; CD is the drag coefficient; ρ is the density of ⎪ N a gk coshk (z + d)
fluid; D is the diameter of slender structure; u and u̇ are the velocity and u x (t ) = ∑n = 1 ωn coshkd
cos[(ωn − 1 + χ Δω) t + εn ]
⎨ n
acceleration of fluid particles, respectively; ẋ and ẍ are the velocity and ⎪ a (t ) = ∑N a ω 2 coshk (z + d) sin[(ω
n − 1 + χ Δω) t + εn]
acceleration of slender structure, respectively; CM andCm are the inertia ⎩ x n=1 n n sinhkd (9)
coefficient and added mass coefficient, and Cm = CM −1. where χ and εn are the random variable uniformly distributed in
For fixed offshore platform, the deformation of structure under [0, 1] and [0, 2π ], respectively. The random variable of χ make the
hydrodynamic load is pretty small. For simplicity, the velocity and frequency spacing with uneven distances, and this avoids the random
acceleration of the structure is ignored in this study, and the simplified process repeated with a period of 2π /Δω.
Morison equation can be given as The random wave loads on slender structures, such as jacket plat-
1 πD 2 form, can be calculated by substituting the random particle velocity and
Fh = CD ρDu |u| + CM ρ u̇ acceleration into the Morison equation. While for the floating structure,
2 4 (4)
the random wave force is usually determined from the convolution of
wave surface elevation and force transfer function of large-scaled
2.3. Wave spectrum structure. The structure’s dynamic response can be further obtained by
integrating the following second order differential equations in time
The random wave processes can be visualized as the summation of a domain with a suitable time integration algorithm [21,24].
large number of periodic wavelets with different direction, amplitude t
and frequency [15], and its energy distribution over frequency can be [M + μ (∞)] x¨ (t ) + ∫−∞ h (t−τ ) x ̇ (τ ) dτ + Cx ̇ (t ) + Kx (t ) = F (t ) (10)
depicted by a wave spectrum Sηη (ω) . In this paper, the Joint North Sea
Wave Project (JONSWAP) spectrum is adopted and it is defined by Mx¨ (t ) + Cx ̇ (t ) + Kx (t ) = F (t ) (11)
following formulae
where Eqs. (10) and (11) are motion equation for floating and fixed
2
⎡ (ω − ωp) ⎤ offshore structures, respectively. M is the mass matrix of structure;
1.2905Hs2 g 2 5 ω 4 exp ⎢−
⎤ γ ⎢⎣ 2σ 2ωp2 ⎥⎦
⎥
μ (∞) and h (τ ) are added mass at infinite frequency and retardation
Sηη (ω) = exp ⎡− ⎛ p⎞
Tz4 ω5 ⎢
⎣ 4 ⎝ω⎠⎥ ⎦ (5) function for floating structure, and h (τ ) can be calculated from the
2 ∞
frequency-dependent damping λ (ω) (h (τ ) = π ∫0 λ (ω)cos(ωτ ) dω). C is
where ωp is the peak angular frequency of spectrum and ωp = 2π / Tp ; Hs
the damping matrix; K is the stiffness matrix; F (t ) is the random force
and Tz are significant wave height and mean up-crossing period of sea
vector and the x (t ) is the motions or displacements vectors.
state; g is the acceleration of gravity; γ is the peak enhancement factor
of the JONSWAP spectrum compared with the Pierson-Moskowitz (P-
M) spectrum, and the average value of 3.3 is adopted in this study. 2.4. Rain-flow counting method
σ represents the narrowness of the peaks and it has different values
for frequencies lower or higher than the peak, as expressed in Eq. (6). The stress response, which is the primarily dynamic response, can
be converted into a set of stress ranges together with corresponding
⎧ ω ≤ ωp σ = 0.07 cycle number by means of cycle counting algorithm. Many counting
⎨ ω > ωp σ = 0.09 methods have been proposed to count the stress ranges, including peak
⎩ (6)
counting method, level crossing method, range counting method, range
The relationship between the spectral peak period and mean up- pair counting method, rain-flow counting method, etc. The rain-flow
crossing wave period can be given as counting method, first proposed by Mastuiki and Endo [1] and

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X. Song, S. Wang International Journal of Fatigue 118 (2019) 162–175

Fig. 2. Rain-flow counting algorithm.

redefined by Rychilik [25], corresponds to the stable cycle stress/strain fatigue failure under constant normalized tension range R has following
behavior of a metal in that all stress ranges counted as cycles will form expression [28].
closed stress/strain hysteresis loops. As illustrated in Fig. 2, the rain-
flow counting method can realistically identify the largest cycles that N = K ·R−M (14)
are most critical for fatigue considerations and it is generally regarded
as the method leading to the best estimators of fatigue damage. where R is the ratio of tension range to reference breaking strength
(RBS); K and M are fatigue strength coefficient and fatigue exponent,
respectively.
2.5. S-N/T-N curve

The S-N curve represents an empirical relation of stress cycle

2.6. P-M cumulative rule
number N to fatigue failure under constant amplitude stress range S .
The data used to construct S-N curve are assembled from collections of
It is an accepted practice that the fatigue damage experienced by the
experimental test [26,27], and the typical single-segment S-N curve
structure from a specific interval of applied stress range is referred as an
usually follows the expression as
individual fatigue damage. The individual fatigue damage is the ratio of
N = A·S −m (12) the cycle number n (Si ) of stress range Si applied to a structure to the
cycle number N (Si ) that will cause a fatigue failure at that stress range.
In the double logarithmic coordinate system, the empirical relation
The cycle number n (Si ) and corresponding stress range Si can be ex-
of stress cycle number N and stress range S is a linear line with a ne-
tracted from the stress response by means of rain-flow counting algo-
gative slope of m and intercept of A . The fatigue code [26] pointed out
rithm, and the cycle number N (Si ) can be easily determined from the S-
that the fatigue damage resulted from the single-segment S-N curve is
N curve. The cumulative fatigue damage can be obtained by linear
over conservative, and a two-segment S-N curve may be more suitable
summing the individual damage from all the considered stress range
for the structure with cathodic protection. As shown in Fig. 3, if the
intervals [25]. This cumulative rule is referred as the P-M rule [4], and
stress range larger than SQ , which corresponds to the stress range of two
can be expressed as
segments intersection, the relation between stress cycle number and
stress range can be represented by Eq. (12). Otherwise, the relation can k k n (Si )
be given as Da = ∑i =1 di = ∑i =1 N (Si ) (15)
N = C·S −r (13)
where Da is the cumulative fatigue damage; di is the individual fatigue
where A and C are fatigue strength coefficient, and m and r are fatigue
damage ratio under the stress range Si ; k is the number of considered
exponent, respectively.
stress range intervals.
Similar to S-N curve, the empirical relation of cycle number N to

Fig. 3. Illustration of fatigue curves: (a) two-segment S-N curve (b) T-N curves.

165
X. Song, S. Wang
3. Conventional lumping block equivalence methods
Lumping the wave scatter diagram into several blocks and using the
representative sea states to estimate structural fatigue can drastically
reduce the number of sea states involved into fatigue assessment and
significantly improve the efficiency of fatigue assessment. After parti-
tion the wave scatter diagram into lumping blocks, the equivalent wave
parameters of representative sea states, including significant wave
height, up-crossing wave period and occurrence probability, can be
determined based on a specific equivalent methodology. To clearly il-
lustrate the basic theory of lumping block equivalence method, one
assumes the wave scatter diagram consisted of N original sea states.
The wave scatter diagram is partitioned into Nb blocks, and there are nj
original sea states in the jth block. The equivalent significant wave
height, up-crossing wave period and occurrence probability of the jth
representative sea state are represented by Hsrj , Tzrj and prj , respectively.
It is worth noting that the occurrence probability of the re-
presentative sea state associated with different lumping block equiva-
lence methods are determined based on the same principle, i.e. simple
summation of the original sea state’s occurrence probability in the
lumping block, as shown in Eq. (16).
nj
prj = ∑ pk
k=1
While the equivalent significant wave height and up-crossing wave
period of a representative sea state are usually calculated from different
methodologies. In this section, the theory of three widely used con-
ventional lumping block equivalence methods, including DNV method,
Sheehan method and Jia method are introduced briefly.
3.1. DNV method
In DNV method [10], the representative significant wave height is a
wave height interval larger than the largest significant wave height in
the lumping block, and can be given as
Hsrj = max [Hskj] + ΔHs
1 ≤ k ≤ nj
where max [∗] is the function that specifies the largest element in the
set. Hskj is the significant wave height of the kth original sea state in the
jth lumping block and ΔHs is the wave height interval in the lumping
block.
The representative wave period is a half wave period interval larger
than the averaging of wave period encompassed by lumping block, and
yields
n yields
∑km= 1 Tzkj ΔTz
Tzrj = +
nm 2 (18)
where Tzkj is the wave period of the kth original sea state in the jth
lumping block; nm is the maximum number of wave period en-
compassed by lumping block and ΔTz is the wave period interval in the
lumping block.
3.2. Sheehan method
In Sheehan’s paper [11], the representative significant wave height
of a lumping block is identical to the largest significant wave height in
the lumping block, and yields
Hsrj = max [Hskj]
1 ≤ k ≤ nj
The representative wave period is set to the probabilistic average of
original sea state’s wave period in the lumping block based on their
occurrence probabilities, and can be given as
International Journal of Fatigue 118 (2019) 162–175
n
∑kj= 1 Tzkj pk
Tzrj =
prj (20)
where pk is the occurrence probability of the kth original sea state.
Compared with DNV method, the Sheehan method can consider the
effect of sea state’s occurrence probability during the process of de-
termining representative wave period and it probably gives better es-
timate.
3.3. Jia method
In Jia method [15], it is assumed that the fatigue damage is pro-
portional to the occurrence probability and the mth power of wave
height. The parameter ‘m’ is the slope of the selected S-N curve, and the
relation adopted to determine the representative significant wave
height can be expressed as
j n m 1/ m
⎛ ∑ Hskj pk ⎞
Hsrj = ⎜ k = 1 ⎟
prj
⎝ ⎠ (21)
The representative wave period can be determined based on the
weighted averaging of wave periods principle, and yields
n
∑kj= 1 Tzkj pk
(16) Tzrj =
prj (22)
It should be mentioned that the equivalent wave period of the re-
presentative sea state determined from Sheehan and Jia method are
identical for they are based on the same principle.
4. The spectral moments equivalence based lumping block
method
Referring to the fatigue equivalence criterion, the fatigue damage
resulted from the representative sea state should be strictly identical to
that contributed from original sea states in the lumping block.
However, correlation between fatigue loads and fatigue damage is so
complex, and it is very difficult to develop a lumping block equivalence
(17) method which can make sure the representative sea state’s fatigue da-
mage exactly equal to the original sea state’s fatigue damage for all of
the lumping block partitions. This paper aims to develop a simplified
lumping block equivalence method which is desired to yield a slightly
conservative fatigue assessment for all the lumping block partitions. For
this purposes, the wave spectral moments are introduced to char-
acterize the correlation between the equivalent wave parameters and
fatigue damage, and it is assumed that the fatigue damage Dak is pro-
portional to the (γm)th power of the spectral wave energy m 0k , and
Dak = m0γm
k (23)
where Dak is the cumulative fatigue damage resulted from the kth
original sea state; m 0k is the spectral wave energy of kth original sea
state; m is the slope of S-N curve and γ is an exponent of spectral wave
energy related to S-N curve slope. As illustrated in Fig. 4, a large
number of spectral wave energy and cumulative fatigue damage data
used to determine the exponent γ are assembled from the collection of
time domain numerical simulation, and the exponent γ is equal to 2/ m
which is obtained from the assembled data with the regression tech-
nique.
According to the P-M rule, the cumulative fatigue damage resulted
from different original sea states can be obtained by summing the fa-
tigue damage resulted from the original sea state, and can be given as
(19)
nj nj
Daj = ∑ Dak pk = ∑ m0γm
k pk
k=1 k=1 (24)
where Daj is the cumulative fatigue damage resulted from the original
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X. Song, S. Wang International Journal of Fatigue 118 (2019) 162–175

Fig. 4. The relation of fatigue damage and spectral wave energy.

Fig. 5. The relation of correction factor βj and quantity of sea state nj .

sea states in the jth lumping block; nj is the number of sea states in the representative sea state and kth original sea state.
jth lumping block and pk is the occurrence probability of the kth ori- The research [19] pointed out the that the fatigue damage resulted
ginal sea state. from representative sea state increases slightly as the quantity of sea
According to Eq. (23), the fatigue damage contributed from the state in the lumping block increases. One deduces that the fatigue da-
equivalent spectral wave energy of a representative sea state can be mage contributed from representative sea state is also related to sea
given as state’s quantity in the lumping block and a correction factor should be
introduced. For the fatigue damage just slightly increases as sea state’s
Darj = m0γm
rj prj (25) quantity increases, the correction factor should decrease as sea state’s
where Darj is the fatigue damage caused by the jth representative sea quantity increases and the value must small enough to fine adjustment
state; m 0rj is the equivalent spectral wave energy of the jth re- the fatigue. For the wave height is square proportional to spectral wave
presentative sea state and prj is the equivalent occurrence probability of energy, and the spectral wave energy is square proportional to the fa-
the jth representative sea state. tigue (see Eq. (23)), the correction factor βj , which related to significant
The relation of spectral wave energy between original sea state and wave height and fatigue damage, should consider the influence of S-N
representative sea state can be set up in viewpoint of fatigue equiva- curve slope and keep the dimensional consistent. In this paper, an ex-
lence criterion, and yields ponential correction factor is adopted and yields,
1
1
n
j γm γm βj = (nj ) 4mnj (28)
⎛ ∑ m0k pk ⎞
m 0rj = ⎜ k=1 ⎟
prj (26) where nj is the number of original sea state in the jth lumping block; m
⎝ ⎠
is the slope of S-N curve, and the parameter '1/4' is used to keep the
Analogy to Eq. (23), the correlation of 2nd spectral moment be- dimensional consistent. Fig. 5 illustrates the value of correction factor βj
tween original sea state and representative sea state can be given as varies with the number of sea state nj , and one can find that the value of
1 correction factor is very small and decreases as sea state’s quantity in-
j n γm γm
⎛ ∑ m2k pk ⎞ creases. Furthermore, for the extreme cases, i.e. the lumping block
m2rj = ⎜ k = 1 ⎟
prj (27) consists of only one sea state or a large number of sea states, the cor-
⎝ ⎠
rection factor approaches to one, and its influence can be ignored.
where m2rj and m2k are the 2nd spectral moment of the jth According to the statistical correlation between wave parameters

167
X. Song, S. Wang
and spectral moments, the equivalent significant wave height and up-
crossing wave period of the representative sea state can be determined
from the following formulae.
Hsrj = 4.00βj m 0rj (29)
m 0rj
Tzrj = 2π
m2rj (30)
The equivalent occurrence probability of the representative sea state
can be obtained by simple summing the original sea state’s occurrence
probability in the lumping block, as expressed in Eq. (16). The newly
proposed lumping block equivalence method depends on just two
spectral moments (i.e. m 0 and m2 ) and the occurrence probability of
original sea states. The equivalent wave parameters of the re-
presentative sea state can be determined easily based on the newly
proposed method after the wave scatter diagram lumping into blocks.
5. Numerical models and environmental condition
5.1. Numerical models
In this study, a fixed jacket platform and a floating semi-submersible
platform are demonstrated in the numerical example to investigate the
validity and applicability of the proposed SME method. As illustrated in
Fig. 6, the jacket platform, which consists of topside and jacket with
four legs, is assumed to work at sea area with depth of 20 m and the
topside is 10 m above the wave surface level. The main particulars of
the platform are summarized in Table 1. For simplicity, 196 Euler-
Bernoulli beam elements are used to simulate both the topside and
jacket of the platform. The equipment and other nonstructural in-
stallation on the topside are simplified as four concentrated mass points
(see the red nodes in Fig. 6), and each concentrated mass point weighs
200 tons. The platform is modeled with steel as the material with
Yong’s modules of 210 Gpa, Passion ratio of 0.3, and density of
7850 kg/m2 , and it is fully fixed at a location six times of pile diameter
which is 9 m beneath the mudline. The basic frequency of the jacket
platform is 1.065 Hz. The random wave propagates along x -axis and the
simulation duration is 3 h with time step of 0.1 s. To fully investigate
the validity and applicability of the proposed SME method, four ele-
ments with different locations and directions are selected. As shown in
Fig. 6, the elements of 20 and 88 are horizontal beam oriented in X and
Y directions, respectively. While the elements of 43 and 70 are chord
10
20
9m
Z the Jia method and the proposed SME method are also related to fatigue
X curve’s slope and sea state’s occurrence probability. In this paper, the
Y slopes of S-N and T-N curves are both identical to 3 (see Table 4), so the
Fig. 6. The finite element model of the jacket platform.
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International Journal of Fatigue 118 (2019) 162–175
Table 1
The main particulars of the jacket platform.
Component Diameter/m Thickness/m Component Value
Chord member 1.5 0.02 Topside 800 t
Pile member 1.5 0.02 Height 30 m
Horizontal bracing 0.7 0.01 Water depth 20 m
Diagonal bracing 0.7 0.01
member and diagonal bracing member, respectively.
A deep-water semi-submersible, which is a dynamic sensitive
structure, is adopted to further verify the validation of the proposed
SME method. As shown in Fig. 7(a), the deep draft SEMI features four
large individual columns and a ring pontoon, and assumed to work at
sea with depth of 1828.8 m. The SEMI is positioned with 12 chain-wire
rope-chain lines grouped in four bundles, each with three mooring
lines. The centerlines of the mooring groups are approximately 90 de-
grees apart, and the separation angle between the mooring lines in each
bundle is 5°, as illustrated in Fig. 7(b). Tables 2 and 3 provides the main
particulars of the SEMI and mooring lines. The coupled dynamic ana-
lysis is performed in the commercial software DNV-SESAM. The
random wave propagates along x -axis and the simulation duration is
3 h with time step of 0.1 s. The accumulative fatigue damages of
mooring lines 5 and 7 occurred at the fairlead are estimated based on
this model.
The parameter details of the S-N and T-N curves adopted in this
paper are summarized in Table 4.
5.2. The environmental conditions
In this paper, only the wave loads and wave induced fatigue are of
concern and influence from wind and current loads is disregarded. To
estimate the long-term structural fatigue damage accumulated by
variable wave conditions, the joint occurrence probability of significant
wave height Hs and up-crossing wave period Tz described by a wave
scatter diagram is adopted. A typically wave scatter diagram in North
Sea consisting of 197 original sea states is illustrated in Table 5.
5.3. Wave scatter diagram discretization
Theoretically, the wave scatter diagram can be partitioned into
blocks in a random manner. While in engineering practice, it seems
more appreciated by designer that the wave scatter diagram is dis-
cretized with a strategy or rule. To investigate the convergence of the
proposed SME method to difference lumping block partitions, the wave
scatter diagram is discretized into 57, 29, 14 and 6 blocks, according to
a specific row-and-column partition rule, respectively. Taking the 57
lumping block cases as an example, the original sea states are dis-
cretized in the 2-row by 2-column manner, as shown in Fig. 8(a). Si-
milarly, other three cases, partitioned with 3-row by 3-column, 4-row
by 4-column and 6-row by 8 column rules, are illustrated in
Fig. 8(b)–(d), respectively. To consider an extreme case, the full wave
scatter diagram is further condensed into a single block, as shown in
Fig. 9.
6. Results and discussion
Referring to the description of lumping block equivalence methods
illustrated in Sections 3 and 4, one can find that the DNV and Sheehan
methods just related to the wave parameters of original sea state. While
exponent ‘m’ of the relations adopted in Jia method and proposed SME
method are set to 3.
X. Song, S. Wang International Journal of Fatigue 118 (2019) 162–175

(a) (b)

Wave

Fig. 7. Sketch of SEMI: (a) Panel model (b) Layout of mooring system.

Table 2 yields the largest representative significant wave height and the Jia
The main particulars of SEMI. method yields the smallest representative significant wave height
Description Value Description Value
among the four compared methods. The representative significant wave
height determined from proposed SME method is slightly larger than
Column side/m 17.069 Pontoon length/m 48.768 the results of Jia method but much smaller than the results of Sheehan
Column height/m 59.131 Pontoon width/m 12.192 and DNV methods. In addition, the representative up-crossing wave
Corner radius/m 2.438 Pontoon height/m 9.754
period determined from Sheehan method is identical to that resulted
Operating draft/m 37.795 Corner radius/m 1.219
Freeboard/m 21.336 Roll radius of gyration/m 36.354 from Jia method, but slightly larger than that calculated from the
Vertical of COG/m 24.465 Pitch radius of gyration/m 36.354 proposed SME method. However, the representative up-crossing wave
Total displacement/t 63,811 Yaw radius of gyration/m 45.785 periods determined from these three methods are much smaller than
that resulted from DNV method. Similar variation trends can be ob-
served for the representative significant wave heights and up-crossing
Table 3 wave periods when the wave scatter diagram divided into 57, 29, 14
The main particulars of mooring system.
and 1 block, which are not shown here due to space limitation.
Component Length (m) Diameter (m) Wet Axial MBF (kN)
weight stiffness
(kg/m) (kN/m) 6.2. The influence of correction factor βj
Platform chain 183 0.147 360.47 1,821,633 18,880
Wire rope 2560 0.273 57.58 8,424,862 47,203 To fully investigate the influence of correction factor β on the per-
Anchor chain 305 0.147 360.47 1,821,633 18,880 formance of proposed SME method, the cumulative fatigue damage of
mooring line 7 are generated under different lumping block partitions
condition, where the equivalent significant wave heights of re-
Table 4 presentative sea states are determined from Eq. (28) with and without
The parameter details of S-N and T-N curves. corrected. It should be mentioned that the quantity of original sea state
Item m/M A/ K r C NQ SQ in the lumping block is different for different lumping block partition
cases, and it increases as the number of lumping block partition de-
S-N 3.0 7.30 × 1011 5.0 4.05 × 1015 1.77 × 106 74.5 creases. Taking the 57 and 29 lumping block partition cases for ex-
T-N 3.0 316 / / / /
ample, there are about 4 and 9 original sea states in each block. The
comparison results are summarized in Fig. 11.
As can be seen from Fig. 11, the fatigue damage increases as the
6.1. The representative sea state
quantity of sea state in the lumping block increases without considering
the correction factor, as mentioned in Section 4. After considering the
To clearly illustrate the discrepancies of representative sea state
correction factor, this variation trend is changed and the fatigue da-
arising from different lumping block equivalence methods, the 6
mage does not change a lot as sea state’s quantity increases. Further-
lumping block partition case, which consists of six representative sea
more, the different of the fatigue damage resulted from the re-
states, are selected to demonstrate, and other kinds of lumping block
presentative sea state with and without considering the correction
partition cases are not shown here due to space limitation. The re-
factor is not remarkable, and the difference decreases as sea state’s
presentative sea states determined from different lumping blocks
quantity increases. When the wave scatter diagram condenses into a
equivalence methods for the 6 lumping block case are illustrated in
single lumping block, the fatigue damages considering and without
Fig. 10.
considering correction factor are almost identical, and the influence of
From Fig. 10, one can find that the representative significant wave
correction factor can be neglected. In addition, without considering
heights and up-crossing wave periods determined from different
correction factor, the fatigue damage is close to but smaller than the
lumping block equivalence methods show similar characteristics for
benchmark value for the 29 and 57 lumping block partition cases.
different lumping blocks. For a specific lumping block, the DNV method
While, the fatigue damage is always slightly larger than the benchmark

169
X. Song, S. Wang International Journal of Fatigue 118 (2019) 162–175

Table 5
The wave scatter diagram in North Sea.

Hs (m) Tz (s)

1.5 2.5 3.5 4.5 5.5 6.5 7.5 8.5 9.5 10.5 11.5 12.5 13.5 14.5 15.5 16.5 17.5 18.5

0.5 0 0 13 1337 8656 11,860 6342 1863 369 56 7 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

1.5 0 0 0 293 9860 49,760 77,380 55,697 23,757 7035 1607 305 51 8 1 0 0 0
2.5 0 0 0 22 1975 21,588 62,300 74,495 48,604 20,660 6445 1602 337 63 11 2 0 0
3.5 0 0 0 2 349 6955 32,265 56,750 50,991 28,380 11,141 3377 843 182 35 6 1 0
4.5 0 0 0 0 60 1961 13,543 32,885 38,575 26,855 12,752 4551 1309 319 69 13 2 0
5.5 0 0 0 0 10 510 4984 16,029 23,727 20,083 11,260 4636 1509 410 97 21 4 1
6.5 0 0 0 0 2 126 1670 6903 12,579 12,686 8259 3868 1408 422 109 25 5 1
7.5 0 0 0 0 0 30 521 2701 5944 7032 5249 2767 1117 367 102 25 6 1
8.5 0 0 0 0 0 7 154 979 2559 3506 2969 1746 776 277 84 22 5 1
9.5 0 0 0 0 0 2 43 332 1019 1599 1522 992 483 187 61 17 4 1
10.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 12 107 379 675 717 515 273 114 40 12 3 1
11.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 33 133 266 314 247 142 64 24 7 2 1
12.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 10 44 99 128 110 68 33 13 4 1 0
13.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 14 35 50 46 31 16 7 2 1 0
14.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 4 12 18 18 13 7 3 1 0 0
15.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 4 6 7 5 3 1 1 0 0
16.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 2 2 1 1 0 0 0

value after considering the correction factor. This means that the cor-
rection factor can fine adjustment the fatigue damage and make sure to
yield the conservative fatigue assessment. The comparison results in-
dicate that the influence of correction factor is not very remarkable but
can indeed improve the performance of the proposed SME method
significantly.
6.3. The fatigue damage of fixed offshore platform
For investigating the validity of the proposed SME method, the
structural fatigue damage under full wave scatter diagram (Table 5) and
the representative sea states determined from four lumping block
equivalence methods are estimated via time domain fatigue assessment
method. The cumulative fatigue damage associated with different
lumping block partition cases are suitably normalized to the fatigue
damage calculated from the full scatter diagram, and the normalized

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Fig. 8. The wave scatter diagram partitioned into blocks: (a) 57 blocks case (b) 29 blocks case (c) 14 blocks case (d) 6 blocks case.

170
X. Song, S. Wang
Fig. 9. The wave scatter diagram partitioned into one single block.
fatigue damage of the four selected elements (see. Fig. 6) are illustrated
in Fig. 12.
Due to normalization, the structural fatigue damage resulted from
the full scatter diagram is equal to one and denoted by a dotted line as
shown in Fig. 12. The structural fatigue damage associated with dif-
ferent lumping block equivalence methods are represented by several
bars in different colors. It is worth noting that a lumping block
equivalence method will overestimate structural fatigue damage if the
normalized value is larger than one, while the fatigue damage will be
underestimated with the normalized value smaller than one. One
should also keep in mind that the underestimating structural fatigue
damage is not allowed in engineering practice. At the same time, al-
though overestimating structural fatigue damage is not impossible, an
excessive overestimation is not recommended due to a significant in-
creasing of manufacturing cost. Therefore, the desired lumping block
equivalence method should have the characteristics of yielding rather
(a)
Fig. 10. The representative sea state: (a) significant wave heights (b) up-crossing wave periods.
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International Journal of Fatigue 118 (2019) 162–175
accurate but slightly conservative fatigue assessment.
From Fig. 12, one can see that the fatigue damage resulted from
different lumping block equivalence methods are consistent for the four
selected elements and the lumping block partition cases. It is notable
that structural fatigue damage corresponding to DNV method is far
larger than one, and the normalized fatigue damage increases sig-
nificantly from 2.54 for 57 blocks to 12.62 for 6 blocks. For the extreme
case, the normalized fatigue damage is about 177.41. This indicates
that the DNV method is not only over conservative but also very sen-
sitive to the number of lumping blocks. In addition, the normalized
fatigue damage resulted from Sheehan method is about 50% smaller
than that resulted from DNV method. This is because the influence of
sea state’s occurrence probability on representative wave period is
taken into consideration, and a smaller representative wave height is
selected in Sheehan method. However, the Sheehan method is still very
conservative compared to benchmark value, and it is very sensitive to
(b)
X. Song, S. Wang
Fig. 12. The normalized fatigue damage of fixed offshore platform.
the number of lumping block as well. Compared to the two methods
above, the normalized fatigue damage of the Jia method seems more
close to the benchmark value, and slightly decreases as the number of
lumping block decreases. However, the normalized fatigue damage of
Jia method is always smaller than one and this indicates that the Jia
method will underestimate structural fatigue damage. It should be
mentioned that underestimating structural fatigue damage is not al-
lowed in engineering practice and more attention should be paid on the
Jia method.
Different from the Jia method, the normalized fatigue damage of the
proposed SME method is very close to but consistently larger than the
benchmark value. The results indicate that the proposed SME method
can produce a particularly accurate and slightly conservative fatigue
assessment, which is what the design engineers expected. Furthermore,
another noteworthy observation is that the proposed SME method is
robust to the lumping block partitions. Taking the element 20 for
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International Journal of Fatigue 118 (2019) 162–175
Fig. 11. The influence of correction factor β .
example, the normalized fatigue damages are 1.21, 1.14, 1.09 and 1.05
for 57, 29, 14 and 6 lumping block partitions cases, respectively. For
the extreme case, i.e. the full wave scatter diagram condensed into a
single lumping block, the proposed SME method still remains con-
siderable accuracy, where the normalized fatigue damage is 1.05.
6.4. The fatigue damage of floating offshore platform
To fully evaluate the performance of the proposed SME method to
different kinds of offshore structure, the cumulative fatigue damages of
the mooring lines associated with a SEMI are estimated. The fatigue
damage resulted from DNV method, Sheehan method, Jia method and
proposed method are normalized by the fatigue damage contributed
from the full scatter diagram, and the corresponding results are sum-
marized in Fig. 13.
There are five features worthy of attention in Fig. 13. First, the
X. Song, S. Wang
Fig. 13. The normalized fatigue damage of mooring lines.
fatigue damage contributed from different lumping block equivalence
methods are consistent for the two selected mooring lines and five
lumping block partition cases. Second, it is notable that the DNV still
overestimates structural fatigue damage significantly and the over-
estimation level increases rapidly as the lumping block number de-
creases, which is similar to the fixed offshore platform. Third, the
Sheehan method can produce more accurate fatigue damage prediction
compared to DNV method as it does to the fixed offshore platform, but
still overestimates structural fatigue damage significantly. Besides, it is
also sensitive to the number of lumping block, similar to DNV method.
Fourth, different from the DNV and Sheehan methods, the Jia method
consistently underestimates structural fatigue damage, but it is not
sensitive to the number of lumping block. Compared to the fixed off-
shore platform results, the normalized fatigue damage of the floating
offshore platform has a smaller value for DNV and Sheehan methods
and has a larger value for the Jia method, and this indicates that the
DNV, Sheehan and Jia methods have better performance for the floating
offshore platform.
The most important feature is that the proposed SME method yields
the most accurate and slightly conservative structural fatigue damage
assessment among these four compared lumping block equivalence
methods. In contrast with the conventional lumping block equivalence
methods, the proposed SME method can maintain its accuracy as the
number of lumping block decreases, especially for the extreme case.
Taking the mooring line 7 as example, the normalized fatigue damages
are 1.05, 1.005, 1.03, 1.03 and 1.12, respectively. These characteristics
indicate that the proposed SME method not only has robustness to
lumping block partitions but also can be applicable to different offshore
structures and fatigue curves. These qualities make the proposed SME
method to be a useful tool in preliminary fatigue design.
6.5. Validation with the experimental results
To fully demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed SME method,
the fatigue damages of the original sea states within a block and the
representative sea state determined from the proposed SME method are
further compared based on the experimental resulted published in
Capponi’s research [29]. Based on the force transfer function and the
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International Journal of Fatigue 118 (2019) 162–175
relation of fatigue life and force power spectral density (PSD) level
summarized from the experimental results, one can determine the force
PSD level from the sea state PSD, and further estimate the fatigue da-
mage resulted from sea state. In this paper, the 6 lumping block par-
tition case is adopted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed SME
method, and the fatigue damages resulted from the original sea states
within the lumping blocks and the representative sea states determined
from the proposed SME method are estimated and compared. For
comparison purposes, the fatigue damages of the original sea states
within a specific lumping block are added up and the fatigue damages
of the representative sea state are normalized by the fatigue damage of
the original sea states. In addition, the difference percentage, which is
Dar − Dao
defined as Dao
× 100% (Dar is the fatigue damage of the re-
presentative sea state; Dao is the fatigue damage of the original sea state
within the block), is given to clearly illustrate the difference of fatigue
damage, and the comparison results are summarized in Fig. 14.
From the figure, one can see that the fatigue damage resulted from
the representative sea state is about 1% larger than that of the original
sea state for the blocks 1–4 and the representative sea state’s fatigue
damage is about 4% smaller than the original sea state’s fatigue damage
for the blocks 5–6. It is noteworthy that the contribution of the fatigue
damage from blocks 5–6 to the total fatigue damage is much smaller
than that from blocks 1–4 due to the smaller occurrence probability,
and the total fatigue damage resulted from the representative sea state
is about 1% larger than that resulted from the original sea states. This
means that the proposed SME method yields a very accurate and
slightly conservative fatigue assessment.
Referring to the comparison results, one can find that the DNV and
Sheehan methods not only overestimate structural fatigue damage
significantly but also very sensitive to the number of lumping blocks. In
addition, the Jia method always underestimates structural fatigue da-
mage for the fixed and floating offshore platform. Although, the accu-
racy of Jia decreases as the number of lumping block decreases, it is not
sensitive to the number of lumping blocks. Compared to the conven-
tional lumping block equivalence methods mentioned above, the pro-
posed SME method has the best performance, which not only yields the
most accurate and slightly conservative fatigue assessment but also has
robustness to block partitions and offshore structures. These features
X. Song, S. Wang
Fig. 14. Comparison of fatigue damage resulted from original sea states and representative sea state.
make the proposed SME method to be a powerful tool for efficient fa-
tigue assessment in preliminary design stage.
7. Conclusion
In this paper, a novel lumping block equivalence method, termed as
spectral moments equivalence (SME) based method, is developed to effi-
ciently estimate structural fatigue damage in preliminary design stage.
The proposed method sets up a novel equivalent correlation between
representative sea state’s spectral wave energy and original sea state’s
spectral wave energy in the fatigue equivalence viewpoint, and employs
the relation of wave parameters and spectral moments to determine the
equivalent wave parameters of representative sea state. In contrast with
the conventional methods, the proposed SME method can take the ef-
fect of fatigue curve’s parameter and sea state’s quantity into con-
sideration and has direct physical meanings and clear theoretical mo-
tivation. The validity and applicability of the proposed SME method
have been numerically verified via the fixed and floating offshore
platform. According to the study of this paper, some main conclusions
can be drawn as follows:
(1) The DNV and Sheehan methods always overestimate structural fa-
tigue damage significantly, and are very sensitive to the number of
lumping block. However, the Jia method consistently under-
estimate structural fatigue damage, and the underestimation level
increases slightly as the number of lumping block decreases.
(2) The proposed SME method can yield the most accurate but slightly
conservative fatigue assessment. It has the best performance for the
fixed and floating offshore platform and can be applicable to dif-
ferent lumping block partitions. It can be a powerful tool for
structural fatigue assessment in the preliminary design stage.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the support by the National Science Fund
for Distinguished Young Scholars, China (51625902), the National
Natural Science Foundation of China, China (51879249), the Major
Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(51490675), and the Taishan Scholars Program of Shandong Province,
China (TS201511016).
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International Journal of Fatigue 118 (2019) 162–175
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