scholarly journals Numerical Modelling for Synthetic Fibre Mooring Lines Taking Elongation and Contraction into Account

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 417
Author(s):  
Ivan Ćatipović ◽  
Neven Alujević ◽  
Smiljko Rudan ◽  
Vedran Slapničar

Synthetic fibre mooring lines are used as an alternative to traditional steel wire ropes due to their higher strength to weight ratio. Benefits are also found in relative ease of handling, and therefore the marine industry has largely accepted this type of mooring line. By rules and regulations, the design of mooring lines should be based on a coupled dynamic analysis of a particular mooring system and moored vessel. This approach incorporates damping and inertial forces (i.e., hydrodynamic reactions) acting directly on the mooring lines due to their motion through the seawater. On the basis of the outer diameter of the synthetic fibre rope, the Morison equation gives estimations of the mooring line hydrodynamic reactions. In comparison to the traditional steel wire ropes, the synthetic mooring lines usually have relatively larger elongations and consequently larger reductions of the outer diameter. Furthermore, the lower diameter certainly leads to reduced values of damping and added mass (of mooring lines) that should be considered in the coupled model. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a new numerical model that includes diameter changes and axial deformations when estimating the hydrodynamic reactions. The development of the model is carried out with a nonlinear finite element method for mooring lines with the assumption of large three-dimensional motions. The obtained results show the effectiveness of the newly developed model as a more accurate approach in calculation of hydrodynamic reactions.

Materials ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 2712
Author(s):  
Elena Ferretti

The present paper deals with an improvement of the strengthening technique consisting in the combined use of straps—made of stainless steel ribbons—and CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer) strips, to increase the out-of-plane ultimate load of masonry walls. The straps of both the previous and the new combined technique pass from one face to the opposite face of the masonry wall through some holes made along the thickness, giving rise to a three-dimensional net of loop-shaped straps, closed on themselves. The new technique replaces the stainless steel ribbons with steel wire ropes, which form closed loops around the masonry units and the CFRP strips as in the previous technique. A turnbuckle for each steel wire rope allows the closure of the loops and provides the desired pre-tension to the straps. The mechanical coupling—given by the frictional forces—between the straps and the CFRP strips on the two faces of the masonry wall gives rise to an I-beam behavior that forces the CFRP strips to resist the load as if they were the two flanges of the same I-beam. Even the previous combined technique exploits the ideal I-beam mechanism, but the greater stiffness of the steel wire ropes compared to the stiffness of the steel ribbons makes the constraint between the facing CFRP strips stiffer. This gives the reinforced structural element a greater stiffness and delamination load. In particular, the experimental results show that the maximum load achievable with the second combined technique is much greater than the maximum load provided by the CFRP strips. Even the ultimate displacement turns out to be increased, allowing us to state that the second combined technique improves both strength and ductility. Since the CFRP strips of the combined technique run along the vertical direction of the wall, the ideal I-beam mechanism is particularly useful to counteract the hammering action provided by the floors on the perimeter walls, during an earthquake. Lastly, when the building suffers heavy structural damage due to a strong earthquake, the box-type behavior offered by the three-dimensional net of straps prevents the building from collapsing, acting as a device for safeguarding life.


Author(s):  
Arcandra Tahar ◽  
Djoni Sidarta

This paper is a continuation of a series of investigation for the dual stiffness approach for polyester mooring lines. Tahar et. al. (2012) has presented the global performance comparison between the dual stiffness method and the traditional method for the Spar platform. As shown in that study, there are appreciable differences between the former and the later methods especially in lateral motions, which, however, result in little difference in SCR strength response. Is it because the Spar has better motion characteristics than other wet tree floating platforms such as the semisubmersible and FPSO? This paper will investigate the effect of the dual stiffness method and the traditional method to SCR response for a Semisubmersible platform. The fully coupled dynamic analysis tool CHARM3D has been modified to incorporate the dual stiffness approach. Two axial stiffnesses (EA) of polyester line, post installation (static) stiffness and storm (dynamic) stiffness have been convoluted into a dual stiffness to represent the total response of the floating platform in a single run. In the traditional method, the analyses are done twice, one run for each stiffness. Then, the extremes from each run are used as governing values for design. The SCR will be modeled and analyzed using ABAQUS software.


Author(s):  
Ronaldo Rosa Rossi

For mooring chains of offshore floating production units, API (American Petroleum Institute) recommends the use of its TxN fatigue curve considering the MBL (Minimum Breaking Load) of an ORQ (Oil Rig Quality) chain even if the chain has a higher grade. This curve has been used in mooring system design of offshore floating production units since the draft edition of API Recommended Practice for Design, Analysis and Maintenance of Catenary Mooring for Floating Production Systems in May 89 and several fatigue tests have been done by petroleum industries, chain manufacturers and research centers. Those fatigue tests show that the use of the MBL of an ORQ chain for higher grades is a conservative assumption. This paper will present an overview of the fatigue curves of materials for mooring lines: stud and studless chains, steel wire ropes and polyester fiber ropes. This overview is based on recent tests, rules and published papers.


Author(s):  
Vegard Aksnes ◽  
Terje Nybø ◽  
Halvor Lie

The floating storage unit Navion Saga at the Volve field in the North Sea suffered from two mooring line breaks in steel wire ropes in 2011. Investigations of the broken ropes indicated that a possible failure mechanism could be high stresses near the wire socket induced by large bending moments in leeward mooring lines. The scope of the current study has been to make a numerical model capable of capturing such behaviour of the steel wire rope and to check if the minimum bending radius could be as low as the rope’s specified minimum bending radius. The numerical model has revealed a possible failure mechanism. The connecting link plate between the upper chain segment and the upper wire segment lies initially on the seabed. When lifted off the seabed, the link plate and the wire socket will fall to the seabed at a higher speed than the upper wire segment. A transverse wave in mooring line plane propagating towards fair-lead is generated when the wire socket hits the seabed. The wave leads to large curvature in the wire near the socket. Sensitivity studies of the governing parameters have been performed to assess the uncertainties of the numerical model. A modified system is presented and it is shown that the phenomenon which is likely to have caused failure in the original system will not occur for the modified one.


Author(s):  
D. L. Garrett ◽  
R. B. Gordon ◽  
J. F. Chappell

Viscous damping due to drag on mooring lines and risers is seastate dependent and significantly affects the motion of a floating platform in deep water, particularly in everyday seastates. This in turn impacts design of the risers, which are typically controlled by fatigue. The dynamic interaction between the platform, mooring and risers cannot be evaluated using conventional uncoupled analysis tools, where each is analyzed separately. Rather, coupled analysis is required to provide a consistent way to model the drag-induced damping from mooring lines and risers. We describe a coupled, frequency domain approach (RAMS – Rational Approach to Marine Systems) for calculating the dynamic response of vessel, mooring and risers. In coupled analysis, the risers and mooring lines are included in the model along with the floater. In this way, damping of the floater motion due to drag on the mooring lines and risers is incorporated directly. It is also valuable to estimate the linear damping factors from the full, coupled analysis results. These damping factors may then, for example, be used in an equivalent linear model of the floating system in which the stiffness and damping effects of the mooring and risers are represented as additions to the floater stiffness and damping matrices. Such a model could be used to efficiently design a subsystem (e.g.; an export riser). We describe a technique to determine the equivalent linear damping factors from the coupled analysis results. This paper also illustrates the use of these methods for a West Africa FPSO. The need for coupled analysis is shown by comparing results from the fully coupled model with those obtained using an uncoupled method in which the mooring line damping is approximated.


Author(s):  
John Flory ◽  
Steve Banfield

Larger vessels are now being moored at terminals which are exposed to high waves and in channels which are subjected to passing-ship-induced forces. These situations increase mooring line wear and loads and sometimes cause mooring failures. This paper will discuss some of the associated problems and some of the solutions. Use of high-performance fiber ropes instead of wire ropes can decrease mooring loads. These mooring line ropes can be handled by fewer people. The risk of injuries is greatly reduced. When properly cared for, these fiber ropes last longer than wires in service. But fiber ropes are vulnerable to abrasion damage, especially in vessel fairleads. Special nylon fairlead liners are now available to eliminate this wear problem. Fiber rope tails are used on mooring lines to increase stretch and reduce peak loads. Greater vessel motions at exposed location moorings have caused cyclic loading fatigue in nylon tails. Industry recommendations have now been clarified to allow the use of longer nylon tails and of polyester tails. More durable nylon tails are now available. Larger vessels entering into and mooring along confined channels increase the risks of passing ship problems. Passing-ship induced forces increase with vessel size and with the greater speed at which larger vessels must pass in order to maintain steerage. Computer mooring analyses should be conducted to ensure that mooring arrangements are adequate. These analyses should account for effects of waves at exposed locations and should include appropriate passing-ship forces. This paper will be of interest to designers and operators of large vessels and of marine terminals intended for such vessels. Paper published with permission.


Author(s):  
Yuda Apri Hermawan ◽  
Yoshitaka Furukawa

Abstract Complicated mooring system well-known as a multi-component mooring line is highly required owing to the deep depth of water and severe sea conditions. Since the dynamic behaviors of such mooring line are quite complex, proper numerical method is indispensable to predict the dynamic behaviors of a multi-component mooring line efficiently and precisely. In this paper, a numerical method improving the lumped mass method is proposed to introduce the three-dimensional dynamic analysis of multi-component mooring line with the motion of an anchor and clump weights. The mooring line is regarded as a multi-component object which has nonuniform segment line characteristics. In this method, lumped mass technique is developed to represent the three-dimensional dynamic behavior of each segment individually, allowing the motion of bottom-end segment as well as the anchor. Then, the motion of the end-segment is regarded as the motion of the upper-end of lower segment. Meanwhile, calculation method of initial condition for dynamic calculation is developed by adopting the basic principle of multi-component mooring line catenary equations. The results of time histories representing the three-dimensional dynamic analysis of mooring line are obtained and compared with other numerical and experimental results presented in published papers. The results show good agreement with both numerical and experimental results.


Author(s):  
K. Gurumurthy ◽  
Suhail Ahmad ◽  
A. S. Chitrapu

Reliability analysis of mooring lines requires an accurate prediction of extreme responses for large number of sea states even for a short-term based approach. In deep water, the interactions between the floater motions and the large number of risers and mooring lines become significant and must be considered for accurate prediction of floater motions as well as line dynamics. Time-domain coupled dynamic analysis procedures have been shown to give more accurate results but at a higher computational expense. Therefore, efficient computational tools are required for reliability analysis of mooring lines for deep water floating systems. Enhanced decoupled dynamic analysis method, in which the floater motions are computed by coupled analysis considering a coarse finite element model of the mooring line, is an efficient method and provides results comparable in accuracy with the fully coupled dynamic analysis procedures. This paper presents the application of enhanced de-coupled dynamic analysis method for reliability assessment of mooring lines for deep water floating systems. For reliability analysis of mooring lines, the methodology presented in Ding et al. [5] is adopted. Reliability analysis of a critically loaded mooring line for a deep water classical spar floater under extreme environmental loads is performed using environmental contour approach. Mooring line tension time histories under various storm conditions are calculated using enhanced de-coupled dynamic analysis. The uncertainty in the predicted maximum mooring line load due to different storm events, variability in met-ocean conditions and numerical models is considered. Probability of failure and the corresponding reliability index of the mooring line are calculated. The impact of variability in predicted mooring line load, line capacities and factors of safety on mooring line reliability are studied. It is seen that enhanced de-coupled dynamic analysis, which predicts the mooring line loads as accurately as coupled dynamic analysis with lesser CPU time, can be used more efficiently for reliability assessment of mooring lines for deep water floating systems.


Author(s):  
Dunja Stanisic ◽  
Michalakis Efthymiou ◽  
Mehrdad Kimiaei ◽  
Wenhua Zhao

A key aspect in the design of a mooring system for a floating production unit is the estimation of the extreme mooring line loads for a specified short-term sea state of typical duration equal to 3 hours. Commonly used design approaches today are based on time-domain simulations whereby each 3 hour sea state is run a number of times (typically 10–30 times) to represent the randomness of the sea. A maximum response is recorded from each simulation. Particular statistic of the maxima data (e.g. mean, most probable maximum or a percentile) is used to represent the extreme mooring load for which the lines are designed. This paper studies and assesses the accuracy of obtaining design value from a population of maxima with reference to the mooring line load of a large ship-shaped floating production vessel. A coupled model, including all mooring lines and risers, has been developed, validated and used to generate responses for 100yr extreme condition and 10,000yr survival condition. To establish an accurate benchmark against which the results are compared, the time-domain analyses (duration 3 hours) are repeated 170 times, for each sea state, to represent different random realisations of each environment. It is examined how the accuracy of predicting the design mooring line load, from a sample of response maxima, improves as the number of simulations is increased progressively from 10 through to 170. The assessment is performed across different statistics of maxima that are usually chosen to represent the design response. Besides the mooring line load, other response parameters such as heave and turret excursion, are examined in this paper. The paper examines whether the severity of the response (100yr vs 10,000yr storm) or the response variable affect the number of maxima required to achieve statistical stability. The results indicate fitting a Gumbel distribution to the maxima from about 30–40 simulations can yield results that are statistically stable and accurate and are recommended as preferred methods of estimating the design response.


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