Environmental Load Modeling for Offshore Malaysia Regions

Rapid expansion of oil and gas industry in 20th century has increased the demand for accurate and reliable environmental load prediction. With the increase of natural disasters like tsunami, typhoon, and rise in water level from global warming, it is very important for engineers to correctly model environmental load for structural design and
reassessment. The structural model for this study consisted of eight fixed offshore jacket structures having four, six or eight legs with K and X type bracing arrangements. Three types of environmental data for ten, fifty and hundred years environmental conditions covering three major regions in Malaysian waters was selected for this study. Environmental loading due to wind, wave and current was calculated with respect to true north orientation. It was observed from this study that Peninsular region jackets had the highest environmental loading of 21.37 MN followed by Sabah region having 3.57 MN and Sarawak region having 3.35
MN. In most cases, the dominant load direction was from North and North East in the South China Sea. Apart from the location, the size, appurtenances and marine growth of the fixed offshore structures proved to have impact on the load calculation. Bigger jackets with more conductors, risers and marine growth gave the higher environmental load compared to smaller and simple jacket structure.