Structural Health Monitoring of Crack Initiation and Growth in Mooring Chains using FEA Methods for Acoustic Emission Characterisation

摘要

Mooring chains for floating offshore installations, typically designed for a 25 year service life, areloaded in fatigue in seawater environments. It is crucial that the life of such structures isextended by regularly replacing old components and performing periodic in-service inspections.Although traditional methods can be successful at detecting and assessing fatigue cracks, thehazardous nature of operation calls for remote techniques that can be applied continuously toidentify damage initiation and progress. Appropriate replacement plans must enhance currentstrategies by implementing real-time data retrofit.Acoustic Emission (AE) has been shown to be a promising technique to detect cracks andfatigue damage in mooring chains. The present paper describes an AE-based methodologycombined with Finite Element Analysis (FEA) for crack initiation and growth for Structural HealthMonitoring (SHM) of mooring chains.