Joint met-ocean description for design and operations of marine structures

For several engineering applications, joint met-ocean probabilities are required. Recently increasing attentions have been given to importance of inclusion wind-sea and swell components in the joint description. Presence of wind-sea and swell will affect design and operability of fixed and floating offshore structures as well as LNG terminals. The study presents a joint met-ocean model which can be applied for design and operations of marine structures, including LNG platforms. The model is fitted to hindcast data from four locations: Southern North Sea, West Shetland, and Northwest Shelf of Australia and off coast of Nigeria. Uncertainties related to the proposed fits are examined focusing on location specific features of the wave climate and an adopted partitioning procedure for the wave components. Implications of the uncertainties on design and operation criteria of LNG platforms are discussed and demonstrated by examples. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.