Design aspects Offshore Structure Design Life and Reuse: The offshore concrete structures installed to date have

b een designed for 2570 years. The Troll GBS was designed for a 70-year life and the Heidrun TLP is d esigned for 50 years. There is not a significant additional cost related to extension of design life f rom for instance 30 years to 50 years or 70 years. One reason is the fact that reinforced and pre-stressed concrete is not sensitive to fatigue. With the extensive design life possible for a concrete platform ther e is obviously a very good possibility for reuse. The investigations carried out on durability and con ditions of existing concrete platforms clearly prove a great potential for reuse. Stiffness: Concrete structures generally have large stiffness. The result is les s flexibility and less deformation applied onto outfitting steel etc. Robustness: Under maximum credible accidents, such as major leakage, collision o r fire, a properly designed and constructed pre-stressed concrete vessel has better inherent safety than a comparable steel vessel. This is one of the conclusions from a technical feasibility and safety s tudy of a 297 m (974 ft) long storage/processing vessel carrying LPG in free-standing tanks performed by Gerwi ck et. al., ref. 15. Here a pre-stressed concrete vessel was designed and compared with an existing steel vessel designed according to the ABS requirements. It was also found that the concrete hull, bei ng stiffer, developed significantly lower dynamic amplification and had a lower risk of failure than t he steel vessel. The concrete hull was found to have adequate safety to justify its use for vessels i n hazardous cargo service without limitation as to length. Impact Resistance: The concrete material has excellent resistance to impact load s. This has been proven through history, and the result is that concrete is widely used in milita ry installations, shelters, in buildings which need to be failsafe and which are regarded as exposed to terr or attacks etc. The concrete hull of a concrete floater will typically be designed for impact loads from any possible dropped object. Still there will be a design requirement to design for accidenta l filling of any compartment adjacent to sea, or adjacent to piping, which is connected to sea. Fire Resistance: As mentioned above concrete is normally considered to be one of the best fire proofing materials available. Two fires inside shafts of North Sea concrete structures ha ve been reported, and damages have been too small to decide any repair work to be done. The combinatio n of excellent fire- and impact-resistance is of course very important for units producing hydrocarbons. Maintenance Free: Appropriately designed and constructed concrete hulls in the m arine environment are almost free of maintenance. Regulatory inspection of the concrete structure is mainly limited to visual inspection and entails no significant cost. Recently constructed concrete platforms have been designed for an operational life of 50-70 years. The maintenance/OPEX aspect was decisive in Elf

Congo s decision to chose a concrete barge on the Nkossa project, ref. 6 and 7, as the concrete hull offered significant savings in expected maintenance cost. The barge will fulfil its functions on site without interruptions for 30 years and there is expected virtually no maintenanc e. To quote Campbell, American Bureau of Shipping Surveyor ref. 16: The history of c oncrete for marine construction is very favourable. There is little doubt that a well design ed, well built, concrete structure will have a longer service life than a comparable steel structure . Motion Characteristics: The motion characteristics of a concrete hull are typica lly better than for a steel floater designed for the same purpose. This conclusion can be drawn based on reports from ship captains (World War II ships and Yee s barges), several studies and recently confi rmed by both analyses and model testing for very large FPSO s (BP Atlantic Frontier Stage 2 / S chiehallion, hull length 280 m). The generally somewhat larger mass and draught, result in improve d motion characteristics. For the very harsh environmental conditions West of Shetland (t he Schiehallion FPSO), the mooring size and cost was reported nearly identical for steel and con crete hulls (ballasted condition governing). The general picture, however, is that the mooring costs fo r concrete vessels/semi s are approximately 10 per cent more expensive than for a steel hull - illustrating that the mooring costs must be included in cost comparison steel versus concrete. Material properties; strength and weight: It is obvious that the weight of the p latform is of importance. A vessel must carry its own weight plus a payload. For the concrete platform the payload is the topside and equipment, as well as any ballast required for hydrostatic an d/or geotechnical stability.