It may be that I have to consider effects of ship movement on a compressor and its piping. There are several vertical components in the system (vessels) which are well above floor level. I assume that ship movement (pitch and roll) may result in a significant load on the mechanical system.

Does any of you have experience in how to deal with this? I see load cases for wind, earthquake, etc. but not for ship movement. Are there any workarounds for this in CII, or should I translate masses plus acceleration into a static (maybe low freq dynamic?) force and apply it to the model?

Any help or suggestion is appreciated.

I recently had a job with a skid which could be used on a ship. This was constructed under Lloyds supervision and lloyds rules for ships gives accelerations for ship movement. These can be entered in CAESAR II as uniform load (you have to switch the uniform load units from force to g's in the special executions window).

You may need to look at the following link. It has necessary load cases you need to consider.

http://webshop.dnv.com/global/downloadfile.asp?fileid=653878

Hope it helps

Corne: thanks for the hint!

Ibrahim: that is a great and usefull document! I didn't know of the existence but it fairly well 'summarizes' many (if not all) topics related to piping systems design.