Numerical Investigation of Residual Strength of Steel Stiffened Panel Exposed to Hydrocarbon Fire

Current industrial practices and approaches are simplified and do not describe the actual behavior of plated elements of offshore topside structures for safety design due to fires. Therefore, it is better to make up for the defective methods with integrated fire safety design methods based on fire resistance characteristics such as residual strength capacity. This study numerically investigates the residual strength of steel stiffened panels exposed to hydrocarbon jet fire. A series of nonlinear finite element analyses (FEAs) were carried out with varying probabilistic selected exposures in terms of the jet fire location, side, area, and duration. These were used to assess the effects of exposed fire on the residual strength of a steel stiffened panel on a ship-shaped offshore structure. A probabilistic approach with a feasible fire location was used to determine credible fire scenarios in association with thermal structural responses. Heat transfer analysis was performed to obtain the steel temperature, and then the residual strength was obtained for the credible fire scenarios under compressive axial loading using nonlinear FEA code. The results were used to derive closed-form expressions to predict the residual strength of steel stiffened panels with various exposure to jet fire characteristics. The results could be used to assess the sustainability of structures at risk of exposure to fire accidents in offshore installations.