Stress Concentration Factors Of FRP-Wrapped Tubular T-Joints Of Jacket Type Offshore Platforms under Brace Axial Loading

Abstract

<span>The present research investigates the relative stress concentration factors (SCF) in a T-joint strengthened with fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) subjected to brace axial loading employing finite element analysis. In this research, three types of FRP material consisting of glass-vinyl ester, glass-epoxy and carbon-epoxy were used as strengthening materials. The FRP was applied on a basic numerical FE model, which were validated against the well-known experimental results on weld toe SCFs. The results showed that the use of stiffer FRP materials on the chord induced more reduction in SCF values. Besides, the use of carbon-epoxy material had efficacy about three times that of GFRP materials in decreasing SCF values. Carbon-epoxy with thickness of 1mm, as the strengthening material decreased the SCF values up to 2.5 and 10.1% at the chord crown and saddle points, respectively.</span>