A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON LATERAL STIFFNESS OF PLATING AND PLAN BRACES IN OFFSHORE DECKS

This paper focuses on the behavior of plating and plan braces in fixed offshore decks for various structural configurations. A frame of a typical offshore deck is analyzed using Staad Pro software. A live load of 5 kN/m2 is considered with other items like secondary beams, handrails, grating and lateral loads. Stiffness of secondary beams is ignored. The structural configurations studied are: a 30 mm thick grated model with plan braces, 8mm thick plated model with plan braces and 8 mm thick plated model without plan braces. By this comparative study it is observed that the plan braces take considerable lateral loads only in the grated models. In the plated models, the lateral stiffness of the plating predominates.