Assessment of the stiffened panel performance in the OTEC seawater tank design: Parametric study and sensitivity analysis

Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is a process of generating electricity by exploiting the temperature difference between warm surface seawater and cold deep seawater. Due to the high static and dynamic pressures that are caused by seawater circulation, the stiffened panel that constitutes a seawater tank may undergo a reduction in ultimate strength. The current paper investigates the design of stiffening systems for OTEC seawater tanks by examining the effects of stiffening parameters such as stiffener sizes and span-over-bay ratio for the applied combined loadings of lateral and transverse pressure by fluid motion and axial compression due to global bending moment. The ultimate strength calculation was conducted by using the non-linear finite element method via the commercial software known as ABAQUS. The stress and deformation distribution due to pressure loads was computed in the first step and then brought to the second step, in which the axial compression was applied. The effects of pressure on the ultimate strength of the stiffener were investigated for representative stiffened panels, and the significance of the stiffener parameters was assessed by using the sensitivity analysis method. As a result, the ultimate strength was reduced by approximately 1.5% for the span-over-bay ratio of 3 and by 7% for the span-over-bay ratio of 6.