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28 SAMC
o
T • Annual report 2012
Ice Management and
Design Philosophy
The expansion of the petroleum industry towards the Arctic offshore pre-
sents new challenges. The search for hydrocarbons in the deep Arctic waters
requires the use of drill ships and floating production units. Typically, these
units require protection by using ice management, i.e., the sum of all activities
where the objective is to reduce or avoid actions from any kind of ice features.
Here, the research in SAMCoT is directed toward establishing a design philos-
ophy for floating structures protected by ice management, which ensures the
fulfillment of standard design requirements without being overly conservative.
Alternative Methods for Quantifying the
Safety of Offshore Structures Protected by
Ice Management
Establishing sound design concepts for offshore struc
tures as development moves further north requires
innovation. Existing concepts need adaptation and
enhancement due to the greater uncertainties and
the harsher environment of the Arctic and subarctic
regions. Additional measures, such as ice management,
may play a crucial role in the design of Arctic offshore
structures. For instance, there are historical examples
in which ice management has been an enabling technol
ogy and without which exploration drillings could not
have been possible. The other concern of oil companies
is how to reduce the cost of Arctic offshore develop
ments and how to make more projects feasible as more
resources are being discovered further north. Selecting
an optimal concept defeating all the environmental,
technological and cost barriers is not a trivial exercise.
The aim of Farzad Farid-Afshin’s PhD study is to explore
different methods of including ice management in a
systematic manner in the design of Arctic offshore
structures and to potentially prepare the basis for a
mathematical tool assisting the concept selection. The
main focus is on the production phase, which typically
lasts for many years (e.g. 25 years), which makes it
very different from short-term exploratory drilling and
shallow coring activities.
In this context, linking a marine operation to a struc
tural design is a unique yet a challenging task never
tried before. What matters is to study the elements of
this system, which includes both the structure and the
operation under the large uncertainties involved. When it
comes to the overall safety of the design concept, risks
and failures involved in both the structural system and the
marine operation should be evaluated. Various factors,
including technical and human factors, can influence the
total safety and thus illustrate a complex picture.
In this respect, alternative methods will be investigated.
In particular, the investigation will explore the use of (i)
probabilistic analyses, which include conventional relia
bility analyses, and (ii) non-probabilistic analyses, which
may include formal measures of possibility, plausibility,
belief, and ignorance (depending on method) and other
potential approaches.
The first set of methods represents an established
approach in offshore engineering, but their application
to design assessments taking into account ice manage
ment operations is a subject of ongoing research, and
further work is needed. The second set of methods
represents alternative formal methods for address
ing uncertainty, and it is of interest to explore the use
of such non-probabilistic methods within the context of
design of Arctic offshore structures supported by ice
management operations.