Elementary Loading Processes and Scale Effects Involved in Wave-in-Deck Type of Loading: A Summary of the BreaKin JIP

Author(s):  
Jule Scharnke

Abstract To quantify the loading due to breaking waves, model tests are currently the option of choice. However, it is suspected that scale effects lead to an overestimation of the prototype loading. As such, a typical question in impact load assessment is how conservative load measurements are. To understand how realistic model testing is in this respect, it is necessary to quantify scale effects in the measured loading due to breaking waves as well as to investigate to which extent entrapped air in the wave and during the wave impact is involved. To do so, the BreaKin Joint Industry Project was started in 2016. The objective of the BreaKin JIP was to get more insight into scale effects involved in wave-in-deck model tests and to take first steps towards linking wave kinematics with measured impact loads. During this JIP wave-in-deck model tests were carried out in MARIN’s Depressurized Wave Basin (DWB) at two scales (25 and 50) in atmospheric and depressurized condition. This paper gives an overview of the results of the BreaKin JIP regarding loading processes involved in wave-in-deck type of impacts, effects of depressurization on measured loads and possible sources of scale effects.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel de Oliveira Costa ◽  
Julia Araújo Perim ◽  
Bruno Guedes Camargo ◽  
Joel Sena Sales Junior ◽  
Antonio Carlos Fernandes ◽  
...  

Abstract Slamming events due to wave impact on the underside of decks might lead to severe and potentially harmful local and/or global loads in offshore structures. The strong nonlinearities during the impact require a robust method for accessing the loads and hinder the use of analytical models. The use of computation fluid dynamics (CFD) is an interesting alternative to estimate the impact loads, but validation through experimental data is still essential. The present work focuses on a flat-bottomed model fixed over the mean free surface level submitted to regular incoming waves. The proposal is to reproduce previous studies through CFD and model tests in a different reduced scale to provide extra validation and to identify possible non-potential scale effects such as air compressibility. Numerical simulations are performed in both experiments’ scales. The numerical analysis is performed with a marine dedicated flow solver, FINE™/Marine from NUMECA, which features an unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) solver and a finite volume method to build spatial discretization. The multiphase flow is represented through the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method for incompressible and nonmiscible fluids. The new model tests were performed at the wave channel of the Laboratory of Waves and Currents (LOC/COPPE – UFRJ), at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.


Author(s):  
Jule Scharnke ◽  
Rene Lindeboom ◽  
Bulent Duz

Breaking waves have been studied for many decades and are still of interest as these waves contribute significantly to the dynamics and loading of offshore structures. In current MARIN research this awareness has led to the setup of an experiment to determine the kinematics of breaking waves using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). The purpose of the measurement campaign is to determine the evolution of the kinematics of breaking focussed waves. In addition to the PIV measurements in waves, small scale wave-in-deck impact load measurements on a fixed deck box were carried out in the same wave conditions. To investigate the link between wave kinematics and wave-in-deck impact loads, simplified loading models for estimating horizontal deck impact loads were applied and compared to the measured impact loads. In this paper, the comparison of the model test data to estimated loads is presented.


Author(s):  
Zhenjia (Jerry) Huang ◽  
Robert Oberlies ◽  
Don Spencer ◽  
Jang Kim

For the design of offshore structures in harsh wave environments, it is essential to accurately determine the wave impact loads on the structure. To date, robust numerical prediction methods / algorithms for determining wave impact forces on offshore structures do not exist. Model testing continues to be the industry practice for determining wave impact forces on offshore structures. Accurate measurements of wave impact loads in model tests have been challenging for several decades. Transducers require the ability to capture the short duration, dynamic nature and high magnitude of impact loads. In order to qualify transducers for these types of measurements, we need to develop a way to physically impose dynamic impact loads on the transducers and to establish benchmark values that can be used to check the effectiveness of their measurements. In this paper, we present our recent research work on transducer qualification for wave impact load measurements, including their development, numerical analysis and wedge drop model tests. Our findings show that wedge drop tests can be used to impose dynamic impact loads for transducer qualification, and that the Wagner solution and / or validated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations that include the effects of viscosity, compressibility and hydroelasticity can provide the appropriate benchmarking values. Numerical simulation results, model test measurements and findings on transducer qualification are presented and discussed in the paper.


Author(s):  
Tim Bunnik ◽  
Erik-Jan de Ridder

The effects of operational wave loads and wind loads on offshore mono pile wind turbines are well understood. For most sites, however, the water depth is such that breaking or near-breaking waves will occur causing impulsive excitation of the mono pile and consequently considerable stresses, displacements and accelerations in the monopile, tower and turbine. As has been shown in earlier, recent publications, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) can be used to accurately analyze wave impacts on offshore wind turbines. However, it is not yet well suited to study the statistical variability of wave impact loads in long-duration sea states, and thus estimate the ULS and ALS loads for which a wind turbine has to be designed. An alternative, simplified approach, is the use of a Morison model in which the kinematics (water particle velocities and accelerations) from a nonlinear wave model are used. For long-crested waves the nonlinear wave model can be run in a 2D mode and is therefore relatively cheap. In this paper model tests for steep and breaking waves on an offshore wind turbine are compared with results from the Morison model. First, a deterministic comparison is made between the wave loads from the model tests and the simulation model (simulating the same 3-hour wave realization as in the basin), which turns out to be difficult because of differences between wave reflections in the wave basin (a physical beach) and the numerical wave model (absorbing boundary condition). Second, a statistical comparison is made by comparing with different wave realizations measured in the wave basin.


Author(s):  
Tim Bunnik ◽  
Joop Helder ◽  
Erik-Jan de Ridder

The effects of operational wave loads and wind loads on offshore mono pile wind turbines are well understood. For most sites, however, the water depth is such that breaking or near-breaking waves will occur causing impulsive excitation of the mono pile and consequently considerable stresses, displacements and accelerations in the mono pile, tower and turbine. Model tests with a flexible mono pile wind turbine were carried out to investigate the effect of breaking waves. In these model tests the flexibility of the turbine was realistically modelled. These model tests were used for validation of a numerical model for the flexible response of wind turbines due to breaking waves. A focusing wave group has been selected which breaks just aft of the wind turbine. The numerical model consists of a one-way coupling between a CFD model for breaking wave loads and a simplified structural model based on mode shapes. An iterative wave calibration technique has been developed in the CFD method to ensure a good match between the measured and simulated incoming wave profile. This makes a deterministic comparison between simulations and measurements possible. This iteration is carried out in a 2D CFD domain (long-crested wave restriction) and is therefore relatively cheap. The calibrated CFD wave is then simulated in a (shorter) 3D CFD domain including a (fixed) wind turbine. The resulting wave pressures on the turbine have been used to compute the modal excitation and subsequently the modal response of the wind turbine. The horizontal accelerations resulting from this one-way coupling are in good agreement with the measured accelerations.


Author(s):  
Zhenjia (Jerry) Huang ◽  
Don Spencer ◽  
Robert Oberlies ◽  
Gracie Watts ◽  
Wenting Xiao

For the design of offshore structures in harsh wave environments, model testing continues to be the recommended industry practice for determining wave impact forces on offshore structures. Accurate measurements of wave impacts in model tests have been a challenge for several decades. Transducers are required to accurately capture the short duration, high magnitude, and dynamic nature of impact loads. The structural model, transducers, and the transducer mountings need to be designed such that mechanical vibrations in the integrated transducer-mounting-structural model system do not contaminate the wave impact measurements. In this work, the dynamic oscillations in the measurements were controlled through the design and fabrication of transducers, their mounting and the GBS model. Wave crest probability distributions were developed that included fully nonlinear effects. These distributions were used as a benchmark to qualify the waves in the wave calibration tests. The highly stochastic nature of impact loads makes it challenging to obtain converged probability distributions of the maximum impact loads (i.e. forces or pressures) from model tests. To increase the confidence in the statistical values of wave impact loads, a large number of realizations were used for a given sea state. Variability of the maximum pressure due to wave basin effects (such as wait-time between tests) was examined with fifteen repeat tests using the same wave maker control signal. These tests provided insights into the random behavior of the impact loads.


Author(s):  
R. Jayalekshmi ◽  
V. G. Idichandy ◽  
R. Sundaravadivelu

The behavior of TLP merits rigorous numerical and experimental studies. Understanding the coupled dynamics is crucial towards establishing the safety of the structure on survival conditions in one hand and optimization of structure geometry for superior performance on the other. The hull-tether coupled dynamics that occur in very deep water cannot be accurately studied through model tests due to depth limitations of the existing model testing facilities and possible scale effects (in the case of ultra-small scale models). In this paper an experimental methodology is presented for physically simulating the coupled behavior of a single column TLP in a wave basin having dimensions 30m × 30m × 3m. Combination of model tests and numerical analysis were carried out. The experimental results are presented for hull motions, tether displacements and dynamic tether tension. The tether profiles indicate hull-tether coupling vividly. The results establish the success of the experimental methodology and importance of coupled behavior.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Darshana T. Dassanayake ◽  
Alessandro Antonini ◽  
Athanasios Pappas ◽  
Alison Raby ◽  
James Mark William Brownjohn ◽  
...  

The survivability analysis of offshore rock lighthouses requires several assumptions of the pressure distribution due to the breaking wave loading (Raby et al. (2019), Antonini et al. (2019). Due to the peculiar bathymetries and topographies of rock pinnacles, there is no dedicated formula to properly quantify the loads induced by the breaking waves on offshore rock lighthouses. Wienke’s formula (Wienke and Oumeraci (2005) was used in this study to estimate the loads, even though it was not derived for breaking waves on offshore rock lighthouses, but rather for the breaking wave loading on offshore monopiles. However, a thorough sensitivity analysis of the effects of the assumed pressure distribution has never been performed. In this paper, by means of the Wolf Rock lighthouse distinct element model, we quantified the influence of the pressure distributions on the dynamic response of the lighthouse structure. Different pressure distributions were tested, while keeping the initial wave impact area and pressure integrated force unchanged, in order to quantify the effect of different pressure distribution patterns. The pressure distributions considered in this paper showed subtle differences in the overall dynamic structure responses; however, pressure distribution #3, based on published experimental data such as Tanimoto et al. (1986) and Zhou et al. (1991) gave the largest displacements. This scenario has a triangular pressure distribution with a peak at the centroid of the impact area, which then linearly decreases to zero at the top and bottom boundaries of the impact area. The azimuthal horizontal distribution was adopted from Wienke and Oumeraci’s work (2005). The main findings of this study will be of interest not only for the assessment of rock lighthouses but also for all the cylindrical structures built on rock pinnacles or rocky coastlines (with steep foreshore slopes) and exposed to harsh breaking wave loading.


Author(s):  
Andrew Cornett

Many deck-on-pile structures are located in shallow water depths at elevations low enough to be inundated by large waves during intense storms or tsunami. Many researchers have studied wave-in-deck loads over the past decade using a variety of theoretical, experimental, and numerical methods. Wave-in-deck loads on various pile supported coastal structures such as jetties, piers, wharves and bridges have been studied by Tirindelli et al. (2003), Cuomo et al. (2007, 2009), Murali et al. (2009), and Meng et al. (2010). All these authors analyzed data from scale model tests to investigate the pressures and loads on beam and deck elements subject to wave impact under various conditions. Wavein- deck loads on fixed offshore structures have been studied by Murray et al. (1997), Finnigan et al. (1997), Bea et al. (1999, 2001), Baarholm et al. (2004, 2009), and Raaij et al. (2007). These authors have studied both simplified and realistic deck structures using a mixture of theoretical analysis and model tests. Other researchers, including Kendon et al. (2010), Schellin et al. (2009), Lande et al. (2011) and Wemmenhove et al. (2011) have demonstrated that various CFD methods can be used to simulate the interaction of extreme waves with both simple and more realistic deck structures, and predict wave-in-deck pressures and loads.


Author(s):  
Anne M. Fullerton ◽  
Thomas C. Fu ◽  
Edward S. Ammeen

Impact loads from waves on vessels and coastal structures are highly complex and may involve wave breaking, making these changes difficult to estimate numerically or empirically. Results from previous experiments have shown a wide range of forces and pressures measured from breaking and non-breaking waves, with no clear trend between wave characteristics and the localized forces and pressures that they generate. In 2008, a canonical breaking wave impact data set was obtained at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division, by measuring the distribution of impact pressures of incident non-breaking and breaking waves on one face of a cube. The effects of wave height, wavelength, face orientation, face angle, and submergence depth were investigated. A limited number of runs were made at low forward speeds, ranging from about 0.5 to 2 knots (0.26 to 1.03 m/s). The measurement cube was outfitted with a removable instrumented plate measuring 1 ft2 (0.09 m2), and the wave heights tested ranged from 8–14 inches (20.3 to 35.6 cm). The instrumented plate had 9 slam panels of varying sizes made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and 11 pressure gages; this data was collected at 5 kHz to capture the dynamic response of the gages and panels and fully resolve the shapes of the impacts. A Kistler gage was used to measure the total force averaged over the cube face. A bottom mounted acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) was used to obtain measurements of velocity through the water column to provide incoming velocity boundary conditions. A Light Detecting and Ranging (LiDAR) system was also used above the basin to obtain a surface mapping of the free surface over a distance of approximately 15 feet (4.6 m). Additional point measurements of the free surface were made using acoustic distance sensors. Standard and high-speed video cameras were used to capture a qualitative assessment of the impacts. Impact loads on the plate tend to increase with wave height, as well as with plate inclination toward incoming waves. Further trends of the pressures and forces with wave characteristics, cube orientation, draft and face angle are investigated and presented in this paper, and are also compared with previous test results.


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