A numerical and experimental approach for optimal structural section design of offshore aluminium helidecks

Helicopters are essential for supporting offshore oil and gas activities around the world. To ensure accessibility for helicopters, helideck structures must satisfy the safety requirements associated with various environmental and accidental loads. Recently, offshore helideck structures have used aluminium because of its light weight, low maintenance requirements, cost effectiveness and easy installation. However, section designs of aluminum pancakes tend to modify and/or change from the steel pancakes. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize section design and evaluate the safety requirements for aluminium helideck. In this study, a design procedure was developed based on section optimization techniques with experimental studies, industrial regulations and nonlinear finite element analyses. To validate and verify the procedure, a new aluminium section was developed and compared strength capacity with the existing helideck section profiles.