ON THE COMPATIBILITY CONDITIONS FOR MODELING TUBULAR JOINTS USING DIFFERENT TYPES OF ELEMENTS

It has been a common practice to model an offshore tubular joint using three-dimensional brick elements for the brace/chord intersection reg ion, including the weldment, and shell elements for the rest of the jo int, instead of using only three-dimensional brick elements. This is t o ensure that the model size is manageable for performing parametric s tudies. However, it is an extremely tedious procedure to implement the necessary and sufficient compatibility conditions at all nodes lying on the interface between brick and shell elements. An investigation ha s been carried out to examine the effects of partial relaxation of com patibility conditions on the location and magnitude of hot spot stress es at the brace/chord intersection. Results obtained have shown that, as long as the compatibility conditions at the shell loof nodes were i mplemented, the hot spot stresses obtained would be reasonably accurat e. It was also found that using three or more rows of brick elements a fter the weld toe will ensure better accuracy of results. Copyright (C ) 1996 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.