Fatigue Reliability Based Design Optimization of Bending Stiffener

A methodology for fatigue reliability based design optimization is proposed for the design of bending stiffener. Bending stiffener is employed to protect the upper connection of umbilical/flexible riser against damage from overbending. It is prone to cause fatigue failure due to the wave induced vessel motions. Therefore, its fatigue character has a great impact on the safety of oil and gas production and we should pay more attention to it. In addition, the fatigue analysis involves material, geometric, and loading uncertainties, hence the reliability analysis is performed for considering the influence of uncertain factors. In this work, the fatigue reliability based optimization involves the fatigue analysis and complex optimization algorithms the metamodel is used to reduce the computational cost. Three metamodels are constructed by the optimum Latin hypercube method. Then, the optimum metamodel is selected for the optimization through the accuracy evaluation. The feasibility of the methodology is verified by a test case of beam. Finally, it is applied to the fatigue reliability based design optimization of bending stiffener. The results demonstrate that this methodology is rational and improves the fatigue reliability of bending stiffener. First, compared with deterministic optimization.