Coupled Dynamic Analyses of Deep-Water Semi-Submersible With New Spread Mooring System

Author(s):  
S. Chandrasekaran ◽  
Arvind Kumar Jain ◽  
Syed Azeem Uddin

Abstract Offshore complaint structures dominate the deepwater oil exploration and production due to their adaptive geometric form and well-established construction practices. Semi-submersible is one of the widely preferred, floating production systems due to its form-dominant ability, better stability characteristics, and best constructional features. It is usually position-restrained using a dynamic-positioning system (active-restraining) or mooring system (passive-restraining); being less-sensitive to freak ocean environment is an added advantage. The Semi-submersible, chosen for the present study is based on a similar configuration of a 6th generation deep-water Hai Yang Shi You (HYSY) – 981 platforms, commissioned by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) in 2012. A sixteen-point, spread catenary-mooring without submerged buoy (case-1) in the form of chain-wire-chain type configuration is used for position-restraining. Response behavior of the semi-submersible with a conventional spread catenary-mooring system with a submerged buoy (case-2) is compared. API spectrum is used for computing wind loads, while the JONSWAP spectrum is used to represent irregular waves for various directions of wave heading. The effect of non-linearly varying current is considered up to 10% of water depth. Numerical analyses of the semi-submersible are carried out under 10-years, and 100-years return period events using Ansys Aqwa. Under wind, wave, and current loads, motion responses of the Semi-submersible at 1500 m and 2000 m water depths are investigated for both the cases in time-domain. Dynamic mooring tension variations arise from the environmental loads are further investigated for a fatigue failure using the S-N curve approach. It is found that the fatigue life of the mooring lines after the inclusion of the buoy is enhanced. It was also observed that, during failure of mooring lines there is an increase in tension of the mooring lines which are adjacent to the failed mooring lines and this is due to the transfer of mooring load and hence reducing their fatigue life.

Author(s):  
Aldo Roberto Cruces Girón ◽  
Fabrício Nogueira Corrêa ◽  
Breno Pinheiro Jacob

In recent years, the design procedures of risers and mooring system for floating production systems (FPS) have had more feedback. In this way mooring and risers designers can identify, even in an early stage, the constraints imposed by one system over the other. This work presents an evaluation of the crossing of the information obtained from the analyses of risers and mooring system. Different riser and mooring analysis procedures are applied to a typical FPS for deep water applications. First, failure zones of the riser system are identified, so a safe operating limit zone can be defined. Then, the excursions of the platform are calculated taking into account the global response of the coupled system (hull, mooring lines and risers). Finally, the results are crossed in order to verify if the excursions of the platform are within the safe operating area. The evaluation presented here shows the important of correctly defining the safe operational zones and how the crossing of information can be conservative or not within the design process of mooring lines and risers.


Author(s):  
Gang Zou ◽  
Lei Wang ◽  
Feng Zhang

As the offshore industry is developing into deeper and deeper water, station keeping technics are becoming more and more important to the industry. Based on the dynamic positioning system, the thruster assisted mooring system (TAMS) is developed, which consisted of mooring lines and thrusters. The main function of the TAMS is to hold a structure against wind wave and current loads with its thruster and cables, which is mainly evaluated by the holding capacity of the system. The arrangement of the mooring lines (location of anchor or the mooring line angle relative to platform) will directly affect the TAMS holding capacity because of the influence of the directions of the mooring forces. So finding out an optimum arrangement of the mooring lines is essential since the performance of the TAMS depends greatly on the arrangement of the mooring lines. The TAMS of a semi-submersible platform, which is studied in this paper, consisted of eight mooring lines. By fixing the layout of the thrusters and changing the location of each mooring line for every case, the performances of the TAMS are analyzed. The platform motions, mooring line tensions and power consumptions are compared to obtain the optimum arrangement of mooring lines, and thus a thruster assisted mooring system with a better performance can be achieved. Time domain simulation is carried out in this paper to obtain the results.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (24) ◽  
pp. 11665
Author(s):  
Shi Liu ◽  
Yi Yang ◽  
Chao Wang ◽  
Yuangang Tu

Spar-type floating offshore wind turbines commonly vibrate excessively when under the coupling impact of wind and wave. The wind turbine vibration can be controlled by developing its mooring system. Thus, this study proposes a novel mooring system for the spar-type floating offshore wind turbine. The proposed mooring system has six mooring lines, which are divided into three groups, with two mooring lines in the same group being connected to the same fairlead. Subsequently, the effects of the included angle between the two mooring lines on the mooring-system’s performance are investigated. Then, these six mooring lines are connected to six independent fairleads for comparison. FAST is utilized to calculate wind turbine dynamic response. Wind turbine surge, pitch, and yaw movements are presented and analyzed in time and frequency domains to quantitatively evaluate the performances of the proposed mooring systems. Compared with the mooring system with six fairleads, the mooring system with three fairleads performed better. When the included angle was 40°, surge, pitch, and yaw movement amplitudes of the wind turbine reduced by 39.51%, 6.8%, and 12.34%, respectively, when under regular waves; they reduced by 56.08%, 25.00%, and 47.5%, respectively, when under irregular waves. Thus, the mooring system with three fairleads and 40° included angle is recommended.


Author(s):  
Hongchao Wang ◽  
Lei Wang ◽  
Hanlin Liu

DP assisted mooring system is a new positioning system including mooring system and dynamic positioning system. In this paper, two measures are proposed to reduce the offset and the power consumption of a generic semi-submersible platform which is equipped with a DP assisted mooring system during operation. One is to tighten the windward mooring lines and slacken the leeward mooring lines, the other is to reduce or cancel the forbidden angles of the thrusters adjacent to the failed thrusters. Given that the two measures can both reduce the offset and the power consumption of the semi-submersible unit, it is suggested to combine the two measures together to obtain better positioning accuracy. This paper is helpful to engineering practice.


Author(s):  
Xutian Xue ◽  
Nian-Zhong Chen ◽  
Yongchang Pu

Abstract In the general offshore operating locations, mooring systems are normally considered to be primarily affected by environmental loadings induced by waves, wind and current. WF motion induced by first-order waves, LF motion induced by second-order waves and wind would make the most contribution to the fatigue damage of mooring lines. However, it was reported recently that in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM), the fatigue life of mooring lines can be significantly affected by the vortex induced motion (VIM) induced by loop current. The aim of this presented paper is to address the influence of VIM on fatigue life of the mooring system operating at the central of the GoM through performing a fracture mechanics (FM) based fatigue analysis for an offshore mooring system. A frequency-domain mooring analysis for the semi-submersible is conducted where WF motion induced by first-order waves, LF motion induced by second-order waves and wind, and VIM induced by loop current are taken into account. WF motion, LF motion and VIM are treated as three independent loading processes. A wide-band loading combination method is then used for predicting the loading processes acting on the mooring system combining WF motion, LF motion and VIM. A fracture mechanics based analysis is performed to examine the fatigue life of mooring system, in which initial surface cracks in previous existence are assumed to grow from the surfaces of mooring chain links connecting to the fairleads. The stress intensity factor ranges to estimate the crack growth in the FM based analysis are obtained from a finite element (FE) analysis.


2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Margareth Kazue Nishimura Kunitaki ◽  
Beatriz Souza Leite Pires de Lima ◽  
Alexandre Gonçalves Evsukoff ◽  
Breno Pinheiro Jacob

The “torpedo” pile is a foundation system that has been recently considered to anchor mooring lines and risers of floating production systems for offshore oil exploitation. The pile is installed in a free fall operation from a vessel. However, the soil parameters involved in the penetration model of the torpedo pile contain uncertainties that can affect the precision of analysis methods to evaluate its final penetration depth. Therefore, this paper deals with methodologies for the assessment of the sensitivity of the response to the variation of the uncertain parameters and mainly to incorporate into the analysis method techniques for the formal treatment of the uncertainties. Probabilistic and “possibilistic” approaches are considered, involving, respectively, the Monte Carlo method (MC) and concepts of fuzzy arithmetic (FA). The results and performance of both approaches are compared, stressing the ability of the latter approach to efficiently deal with the uncertainties of the model, with outstanding computational efficiency, and therefore, to comprise an effective design tool.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (24) ◽  
pp. 8303
Author(s):  
Shi Liu ◽  
Yi Yang ◽  
Chengyuan Wang ◽  
Yuangang Tu ◽  
Zhenqing Liu

Floating wind turbine vibration controlling becomes more and more important with the increase in wind turbine size. Thus, a novel three-bifurcated mooring system is proposed for Spar-type floating wind turbines. Compared with the original mooring system using three mooring lines, three-bifurcated sub-mooring-lines are added into the novel mooring system. Specifically, each three-bifurcated sub-mooring-line is first connected to a Spar-type platform using three fairleads, then it is connected to the anchor using the main mooring line. Six fairleads are involved in the proposed mooring system, theoretically resulting in larger overturning and torsional stiffness. For further improvement, a clump mass is attached onto the main mooring lines of the proposed mooring system. The wind turbine surge, pitch, and yaw movements under regular and irregular waves are calculated to quantitatively examine the mooring system performances. A recommended configuration for the proposed mooring system is presented: the three-bifurcated sub-mooring-line and main mooring line lengths should be (0.0166, 0.0111, 0.0166) and 0.9723 times the total mooring line length in the traditional mooring system. The proposed mooring system can at most reduce the wind turbine surge movement 37.15% and 54.5% when under regular and irregular waves, respectively, and can at most reduce the yaw movement 30.1% and 40% when under regular and irregular waves, respectively.


Author(s):  
Long Yu ◽  
Jiahua Tan

Multi-component mooring systems, one of the crucial equipments of offshore platforms, play an important role in deep water oil&gas production because of relative low cost and light weight. A single mooring line can be constructed by combination of wire ropes, chains, fiber ropes, buoys and connectors etc. and provide adequate restoring force at fairlead point of platforms. Although the static and dynamic analyzing approaches for a determined multi-component system have been studied already, it is still hard to design and predetermine an appropriate mooring system that can satisfy the codes with multi-component lines. Referred to the conventional mooring system design method, this paper brings out an optimal design methodology for multi-component mooring systems. According to quasi-static method, at extreme offset position of the platform, an optimization model for designing the multi-component mooring line with biggest tension in deep water has been provided. Then, with the aid of design wave method and morison equation, a finite element model has been used to calculate mooring line dynamics at each fairlead point in time domain. The nonlinear interaction of mooring lines and seabed has also been investigated. Heave and surge of the platform have also been considered. Both 2D and 3D mooring system models have been built to search the interference of the lines and directional influence of environment loads like current and wave. The paper applied this set of analyzing methods and processes into a deep water semisubmersible serving at South China Sea. Compared with the results calculated by other software, the methodology mentioned in the paper got similar result with less weight and bigger restoring force.


2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S69-S77 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. B. M. Saiful Islam ◽  
Mohammed Jameel ◽  
Suhail Ahmad ◽  
Mohd Zamin Jumaat ◽  
V. John Kurian

Floating spar platform has been proven to be an economical and efficient type of offshore oil and gas exploration structure in deep and ultra-deep seas. Associated nonlinearities, coupled action, damping effect and extreme sea environments may modify its structural responses. In this study, fully coupled spar–mooring system is modelled integrating mooring lines with the cylindrical spar hull. Rigid beam element simulates large cylindrical spar hull and catenary mooring lines are configured by hybrid beam elements. Nonlinear finite element analysis is performed under extreme wave loading at severe deep sea. Morison's equation has been used to calculate the wave forces. Spar responses and mooring line tensions have been evaluated. Though the maximum mooring line tensions are larger at severe sea-state, it becomes regular after one hour of wave loading. The response time histories in surge, heave, pitch and the maximum mooring tension gradually decreases even after attaining steady state. It is because of damping due to heavier and longer mooring lines in coupled spar–mooring system under deep water conditions. The relatively lesser values of response time histories in surge, heave, pitch and the maximum mooring tension under extreme wave loading shows the suitability of a spar platform for deep water harsh and uncertain environmental conditions.


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