The development of offshore structures has been phenomenal over the last few decades. The key driver for such development is primarily due to the constant urge to explore deep waters due to the ever-increasing oil demands.

The continuous rise in the need of deep water developments and exploitation of shallow water reserves has invoked a new range of offshore structures. These tower systems must withstand extreme wind and wave loading conditions apart from land-based loading conditions. As such their structural integrity is based on multiple factors making its design complex and often time consuming. Measuring the effect of extreme waves and its impact on these structures is of paramount importance and is often done experimentally.

Finite element method is a useful approach in such situations, helping design engineers to identify some of the critical design parameters that require quick attention to overcome excessive stress and deformation that may lead to catastrophic failure. The cost-effectiveness and safety of the offshore structure design is mainly dependent on the response demands in terms of wind and wave loads, bending moment and deformation. The design of these offshore structures is site specific and hence it is crucial to identify loads accordingly to ensure a prolonged useful life of the structure.

Developing a finite element model of tower systems can be improvised by utilizing beam elements for the tower legs. It is however important to determine the amount of accuracy required in the results. In many cases, full solid elements are required to capture stress details accurately.

The hydrodynamic loads are dynamic in nature; however, static pressure loads can be assumed to be used in performing structural analysis. The forces are usually calculated using Morison