Fatigue of offshore structures: A review of statistical fatigue damage assessment for stochastic loadings

Structural offshore fatigue can be accelerated way to reduce the time required for testing. In this regard, a statistical analysis of the loads must be performed to reduce loads with low damage contribution, while the uncertainties from external sources are retained. This process generates the spectrum required to perform the accelerated tests. Subsequently, the spectrum can be extrapolated, which increases the damage and reduces the testing time. In this work, a review of the main types of offshore structures is presented, including a description of the main statistical signal process analysis. In addition, a review of the damage model used in offshore analysis is presented. This can be modelled as a Gaussian or narrow-band process, depending on the variable amplitude loading which generates a random process due to waves.