engineering

Spar (platform)

Spar (platform) is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Spar (platform) rather than just read about it. In short: A spar is a marine structure, used for floating oil/gas platforms. Named after navigation channel Spar buoys, spar platforms were developed as an extreme deepwater alternative to conventional platforms.

Key takeaways

Spar (platform) belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Spar (platform) to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Spar (platform) from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A spar is a marine structure, used for floating oil/gas platforms. Named after navigation channel Spar buoys, spar platforms were developed as an extreme deepwater alternative to conventional platforms. The deep draft design of spars makes them less affected by wind, wave, and currents and allows for both dry tree and subsea production. A spar platform consists of a large-diameter, vertical buoyant cylinder(s) supporting a deck. Spars are permanently anchored to the seabed by a spread mooring system composed of either a chain-wire-chain or chain-polyester-chain configuration. The cylinder comprises a number of tanks; the lowest contains ballast, mid-water and/or extracted oil, the upper, air for buoyancy. Helical strakes are fitted to larger & more recent designs to mitigate the effects of vortex-induced motion. There are three primary types of spars; classic, truss, and cell:

A classic spar consists of a tall-height, cylindrical hull, with tanks for heavy ballast located at the bottom of the cylinder. A truss spar comprises three parts, a short-height, large-diameter cylindrical hull, atop a truss structure, atop tanks for heavy ballast. A cell spar consists of a cluster of small-diameter cylinders and relatively speaking, cheap to manufacture. Cylinders are either buoyancy only, or subdivided into buoyancy and ballast. The first spar platform was the Brent Spar. Designed for storage and offloading of crude oil products, it was installed on the UK's Brent Field in June 1976. Shell's attempted deep sea disposal of the platform in the 1990s created a massive environmental backlash by Greenpeace. The spar was eventually dismantled, with ballast used as a foundation for a quay in Norway. The first spar platform designed for production was the Neptune spar, located in the Gulf of Mexico, and was installed in September 1996 by Kerr McGee. The first, and thus far unique, cell-spar platform was Kerr-McGee's Red Hawk spar (7 ea. 8 m (26 ft) diameter cells). Field-depletion occurred 4 years after production started, so Red Hawk was decommissioned in 2014 under the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement's "Rigs-to-Reefs" program, at which time it was the deepest floating platform to be decommissioned. The world's deepest production platform is Perdido, a truss spar in the Gulf of Mexico, with a mean water depth of 2,438 m (7,999 ft). It is operated by Royal Dutch Shell and was built at a cost of $3 billion.

References

External links

GlobalSecurity.org page on spar platforms - containing detailed diagrams

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Spar (platform)

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Spar (platform) claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Spar (platform) before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Spar (platform) ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Spar (platform)

In research: Spar (platform) appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Spar (platform) in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Spar (platform) is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Offshore engineering, Oil platforms, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Spar (platform) outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Spar (platform) in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Spar (platform) means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Spar (platform) out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Spar (platform) in simple terms?

Why does Spar (platform) matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Spar (platform)?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Spar (platform).