A New Function for Frequency Analysis in the Risk Assessment of Offshore Oil-Related Platforms

Abstract

Risk assessment of offshore oil-related platforms such as the floating production storage and offloading system (FPSO) is extremely important. In earthquakes prone to target sea areas, earthquakes should be considered as one of the important external forces that cause severe damage. In such risk assessments, for estimating the appearance frequency of seismic energy, the complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of seismic energy of a considered area is usually based on the Gutenberg–Richter law. Furthermore, it is important to estimate the CCDF of the leak hole diameter when estimating the damage caused by an oil spill accident in an offshore oil-related platform. Some ship classification societies recommend using a formula based on the power law distribution as used in those processes. However, the power law distribution has a drawback in that, i.e., it is essentially impossible to accurately estimate the CCDF over the entire domain of the random variables. The authors have developed an enhanced power law distribution function that eliminates such defects in the power law distribution function and some practical methods for estimating its parameters. In this study, the developed function is applied to the CCDFs of the seismic energy and leak hole diameter. The results demonstrate that the function fits the existing data with sufficient accuracy. Therefore, the new function introduced here can be well used in the frequency analysis of the risk assessment of offshore oil-related platforms. In the risk assessment of offshore oil-related platforms like floating production storage and offloading system (FPSO), it is necessary to estimate probabilistic characteristics of external forces against them. Earthquakes are a major external force. Furthermore, it is necessary to estimate the damage when an external force is applied. The frequency of external forces, such as earthquakes, is low, but the damage is extensive. However, damage to offshore oil-related platforms is caused by not only these external forces, but also oil leaks resulting from some factors, such as operation errors and corrosion, that may cause accidents such as fire and explosion. Therefore, it is also essential to estimate the probabilistic characteristics of such damage for the risk assessment of offshore oil-related platforms.