Hydroelastic Response of a Subsea Production Platform

The use of subsea production platforms and systems is widely employed in the course of deep and ultra deep waters exploration and exploitation activities. The increasing importance of these structures is driven in part by the global prospecting effort for deep and ultra deep waters oil/gas resources. Nonetheless, these structures and systems are constantly under the influence of hydrodynamic forces that prevail in such locations. In this paper, the nonlinear hydroelastic response of a subsea production platform idealized as a rectangular template supported on four cylindrical tensioned legs that are partly buried in a moving nonlinear elastic medium is investigated analytically. By employing singular perturbation with multiple scales and integral transforms, the effect of waves and the subsoil layer characteristics on the natural frequency of the systems and dynamic response interaction are reported for design analysis and application.