Dynamic analysis of a flare tower in off-shore platforms

• Autor(a) principal: Maciel, Daniel Nelson
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Drumond, Tomaz de Paula, Greco, Marcelo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFRN
• Texto Completo: https://repositorio.ufrn.br/handle/123456789/30794
• topic: Explosion effects; Nonlinear analysis; Space truss

Since deepwater petroleum deposits were discovered in 2008, many projects of off-shore platforms were made in Brazil. Therefore, it is necessary to know better the behavior of structural elements that are used on these platforms, both under static and under dynamic conditions. The present work deals with the dynamic analysis of a flare tower, which is a truss structure attached to these platforms, where gases with no industrial application are burned. As a result of the burn, shock waves generated during the process reach the flare tower structure, causing the occurrence of blast loads. On the present work, the behavior of the flare tower under blast loadings was analyzed. The structure was considered as a space truss due to its geometry and its joints. New flare tower dimensions were calculated and equivalent blast loading values were estimated. These values were established as initial conditions; stress and strainvalues in the finite elements are calculated. Thus, it was possible to evaluate if the structure of the flare tower would fail and the critical conditions on the structure could be identified. Results indicate that the structure is in safe conditions up to a limited period of time, due to the fatigue of materials.is