Mammoet is developing a new type of system for the transportation of offshore power cables. With this system the cables can be spooled, stored, and transported both on land and on heavy transport vessels in a more efficient way. There are a few uncertainties for the system, mainly about the loads on the carousel and the behavior of the cable stack. These uncertainties resulted in some assumptions that have been used for the proposed design. Furthermore, there are a few challenges for the system that need to be addressed to compete with the current offshore power cable transportation methods. The main challenges include the structural strength and stability in combination with the self-weight, the used cylinder stroke of the hydraulic SPMT cylinders and other issues with the SPMTs. In this study these uncertainties and the challenges for the current design of the system are investigated, which resulted in more insight in the uncertainties and a new concept with improved performance against the challenges.

In this literature study the buckling of frames is investigated. Two frames are considered, where both consists of two columns and a girder. The first step was looking at the behavior of a single column under an compressive load. This results in so called effective lengths for different sets of boundary conditions on the column. Because in a frame the multiple columns and girders work together, the buckling mode also depends on the frame itself and the neighboring beams. There are two types of frames according to their buckling mode, a sway and a non sway frame. For determining the effective buckling lengths Eurocode 3 is studied for general rules for frames and calculation methods for effective lengths. Also the method from the AISC standard is described shortly. After that, it is investigated what methods the FEM programs use. Beside these methods, another method has been found and will be demonstrated on both situations. In the last chapter the results are summarized and a final conclusion and recommendation are made.