Safety and Reliability of Offshore Energy Facilities

Dear Colleagues,

Our societies have been facing major consequences of climate change and, over the course of the last 30 years, though especially since 2022, major energy crises have highlighted that clean and new power plants should be developed. The objective of such an initiative is to ensure a production level at a lower cost. Offshore energy facilities, which have been developed since the 1990s, are one the most promising solutions to meet these challenges.

The marine environment is complex and offers harsh environmental conditions for these facilities.  Moreover, its effect on infrastructures and systems is hard to model. As a consequence, engineering must account for uncertainties and assess the reliability of these facilities. This Special Issue aims to bring together scientists, research engineers and decision-makers in the fields of system safety of complex engineering systems, structural health monitoring, cost/benefit assessment, and risk management in order to present and discuss innovative methodologies and practical applications related to reliability of offshore energy facilities. Scientific methodologies, theoretical issues and practical case studies are expected to cover the entire range of applications, from the academic to the industrial, including electro-mechanical and civil engineering applications.

There are many technical issues where risk, reliability and safety are involved: evaluation of uncertain resources (wind, wave, currents), material reliability, complex system reliability, electrical grid optimization, collision with ships, governance of risk in a multi-usage area (fishing, tourism, maritime transport, European defense).

Topics include (but are not limited to):

• Reliability-based design and optimization (including structural, material and electro-mechanical issues);
• Service lifetime extension;
• Risks during sea operations and during service lifetime in a multi-usage area;
• Robustness quantification of complex systems;
• Electrical grid reliability and optimization and asset management;
• Life-cycle assessment and optimization;
• Structural and mechanical reliability, including electro-mechanical systems;
• Probabilistic degradation models of materials for energy offshore facilities;
• Added value of structural health monitoring and inspection, maintenance and repair optimization;
• Risk assessment and decision theory;
• Failure consequences on human lives, activities and environmental damage;
• Industrial case studies in marine renewable energy.

This Special Issue also aims at crossing energy sectors:

• Offshore wind turbines, both bottom-fixed and floating;
• Offshore substations;
• Offshore tide energy converters;
• Wave energy converters;
• Solar energy converters;
• H2 offshore production plants;
• Mixed systems;

Prof. Dr. Franck Schoefs
Prof. Dr. Bernt J. Leira
Prof. Dr. John Dalsgaard Sørensen
Dr. Vikram Pakrashi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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