Fitness-for-Service Criteria for Assessing the Significance of Fatigue Cracks in Offshore Structures

The objective was to develop guidelines for evaluating defects found during in-service inspection of offshore structures. The approach is based on fracture mechanics methods where the key ingredient in the assessment methodology is a semi- empirical model, relating crack growth rate to anticipated operating conditions. Various models developed for predicting growth rates of cracks under random loading will be studied by comparing analytical predictions with experimental results on growth of surface cracks in representative offshore steel weldments. This is a companion study to Project No. 37.