NAFEMS Benchmark Challenge - NBC06 Solution - The Sleipner Incident

In a recent article ('the Early Days', January 2016),Peter Bartholomew describes how John Robinson, one ofthe founders of NAFEMS, noted in the early 1970s that both coding and modelling errors were commonplace and only time separated the community from computer-aided catastrophe (CAC). In the early 1990s just such an incident of CAC occurred when the reinforced concrete Sleipner Platform A sank in a Norwegian Fijord. No one was injured, but the incident cost some $700M (US). The subsequent inquiry found that the FE modelling local to the failure had been inadequate, under-predicting the shear forces by some 45%, and that the reinforcement detailing in the region was not adequate to support the loading. This incident, now some 25 years ago, is a significant reminder of the importance of good simulation governance and, as there are useful lessons to learn from it, this challenge revisits the Sleipner Incident.