Research on truncation method of FPSO and offloading system in model test

The model test method of the FPSO and offloading system is investigated by using the development mode of “FPSO + CALM + TANKER” working in a 1700-m depth of offshore West Africa. An equivalent design based on static and dynamic similarity criteria for oil offloading line (OOL) is discussed, and a type of creative method for the equivalent design of OOL in a model test is proposed. Based on the static similarity criterion, the truncated design of the FPSO mooring system in water depth and horizontal directions is carried out. After that, a relevant static optimization is conducted. Meanwhile, to avoid interference between the FPSO mooring system and CALM mooring system, a horizontal equivalent design for the CALM mooring system is provided. On this basis, the model test scheme is conducted. Time domain coupled analyses for the whole system before and after truncation are later performed. After comparison, it is observed that the calculated results of the truncated system are basically consistent with those of the prototype system, and the design of the model test scheme is demonstrated to be robust and reliable.     

系泊链海水疲劳性能初步研究

通过试验研究了直径最大到187 mm的R4和R4S级系泊链在人工海水中的疲劳性能。根据疲劳试验得到了相应载荷振幅下的疲劳循环次数,并将结果和DNVGL OS-E301及API RP 2SK中的设计曲线进行了比较和分析。通过链环有限元计算,结合实际试验结果,验证了链环在拉伸载荷下的应力分布和断裂热点,为进一步分析系泊链疲劳失效机理和海洋平台系泊系统设计提供了有效的试验数据。     

一种适用于深水浮式海洋平台结构的新型系泊系统设计及水动力性能分析

作为浮式结构最常采用的两种系泊方式,悬链式系泊和张紧式系泊皆存在不足。本文提出了一种新型系泊系统,并以一深水FPSO为例,采用完全时域耦合分析方法,对不同工作水深情况下的浮体及新型系泊系统的运动性能进行了数值模拟,并将该新型系泊系统的仿真结果与传统的张紧式系泊系统进行了比较,分析了新型系泊系统在浮体运动性能、缆索张力等方面的改善,同时探讨了该新型系泊系统的最佳工作水深。     

Mooring system reliability in tropical cyclone and North Sea winter storm environments

The characteristics of waves, winds and currents in a tropical cyclone environment differ significantly from those in a winter storm environment, like the North Sea. This can have a significant effect on the reliability of a mooring system that is designed to satisfy 100 yr conditions with specified Factors of Safety in accordance with ISO19901-7 or API RP 2SK. This paper presents reliability analysis of the mooring system of a permanently connected Floating LNG vessel, placed at two locations: (a) a tropical cyclone environment of the North West Shelf of Australia and (b) a winter storm environment of the North Sea. It is demonstrated that as a result of differences in the long term distribution of environmental parameters (waves, winds) between a North Sea environment and a tropical cyclone environment, the long term distribution of the mooring line response differs significantly in these two locations.This paper shows that a mooring system which is designed in accordance with ISO (or API), in these two environments, will achieve very different reliability levels because of the significant differences in environmental characteristics. In order to achieve the same reliability for the mooring system at these two geographical locations, Factors of Safety for use with 100 yr environmental conditions (Ultimate Limit State) were derived to achieve the same target probability of failure of 10⁻⁴/annum. It was found that for the North Sea environment, a factor of 1.5 is required for both the mooring chain and the pile, while for the tropical cyclone environment the required Factor of Safety has to be increased to 2.1. These differences are very significant and design standards need to be revised to reflect these findings.     

对称式布置锚链系统的线性化处理

用悬链线方程求解了不同锚链状态的锚链力 ,并用多项式回归了锚链力与锚固点位移的关系 ,由此求得锚链恢复力刚度系数。分析了对称式布置锚链系统的非线性程度 ,阐述对称式布置锚链系统所提供的恢复力作线性化处理的可行性及方法 ,并给出了对称布置锚链系统的线性刚度矩阵。为各类受对称式布置锚链系统约束的浮动结构物的动力分析提供了理论依据     

Long-term response analysis of FPSO mooring systems

The design of mooring systems for floating production units usually considers extreme environmental conditions as a primary design parameter. However, in the case of FPSO (Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading) units, the worst response for the mooring system may be associated with other sea state conditions due to the fact that its extreme response may be associated with a resonant period instead of an extreme wave height. The best way to deal with this problem is by performing long-term analysis in order to obtain extreme response estimates. This procedure is computationally very demanding, since many short-term environmental conditions, and their associated stochastic nonlinear time domain numerical simulations of the mooring lines, are required to obtain such estimates. A simplified approach for the long-term analysis is the environmental contour-line design approach. In this paper a Monte Carlo-based integration procedure combined with an interpolation scheme to obtain the parameters of the short-term response distribution is employed to hasten the long-term analysis. Numerical simulations are carried out for an FPSO at three different locations considering a North Sea joint probability distribution for the environmental parameters. The long-term analysis results are compared against those obtained using extreme environmental conditions and environmental contour-line methodology. These results represent the characteristic load effect for the design of mooring systems of floating units using the reliability analysis for mooring line. The results show that the long-term results are usually more critical than those obtained with the other approaches and even different mooring lines can be identified as the critical ones.     

Modelling of the passive turning of a turret moored vessel in conditions of compact ice

The concept of the offshore oil and gas field development using floating ship-shaped platforms, frequently named floating production units (FPU further), with turret mooring is widely used in the world, including regions with harsh environment. The direct transfer of this concept to the Arctic seas is not possible, mostly due to the difficulties of maintaining a weathervaning, or passive turning regime in heavy ice conditions. The main danger relates to the fact that the expected FPU rotation under the action of high ice loads can be accompanied by a translational displacement of the FPU away from the mooring point. As a result, the mooring system may reach an overloaded state until the FPU turns to a favourable position relative to the ice drift direction. In the paper, we are focused on the investigation of a mathematical model of the passive FPU turning on a spot under the assumption that the ice cover is described by a rigid-plastic continuum. The study is performed both analytically and by numerical simulations. A number of specific FPU motion patterns are analytically derived from the model in quasi-static approximation in the form of successive limit states of the system FPU – ice continuum. Some results of the corresponding numerical simulation are presented that confirm the existence of similar solutions in the full dynamic setting of the problem. A partial parametric analysis of the problem is also performed.     

双体波浪能装置运动及系泊系统特性研究

波浪能是一种清洁、可再生的新型能源,波浪能发电装置在海上作业时会受到变化的风、浪、流载荷作用,需要系泊系统保证其稳性和安全性。以适用于中国南海500 m水深的振荡双浮体式波浪能发电装置为研究对象,运用频域计算与时域计算结合的方法对双浮体及其系泊系统的运动响应和动力载荷进行计算,获取极端海况与工作海况下浮体运动和系泊缆索张力的时历数据。参照BV船级社NR-493规定的海上浮式结构物系泊安全系数规范,对3种系泊方案进行安全校核和对比分析。选定其中一种系泊方案,通过改变系泊系统以及能量转换器（PTO）的参数,探究参数变化对双体波浪能装置运动响应以及系泊系统特性的影响,为类似应用于深水的双体波浪能装置系泊系统的设计提供参考。     

Stiffness of mooring lines and performance of floating breakwater in three dimensions

In the present paper, the performance of a moored floating breakwater under the action of normal incident waves is investigated in the frequency domain. A three-dimensional hydrodynamic model of the floating body is coupled with a static and dynamic model of the mooring lines, using an iterative procedure. The stiffness coefficients of the mooring lines in six degrees of freedom of the floating breakwater are derived based on the differential changes of mooring lines' tensions caused by the static motions of the floating body. The model of the moored floating system is compared with experimental and numerical results of other investigators. An extensive parametric study is performed to investigate the effect of different configurations (length of mooring lines and draft) on the performance of the moored floating breakwater. The draft of the floating breakwater is changed through the appropriate modification of mooring lines' length. Numerical results demonstrate the effects of the wave characteristics and mooring lines' conditions (slack-taut). The existence of ‘optimum’ configuration of the moored floating breakwater in terms of wave elevation coefficients and mooring lines' forces is clearly demonstrated, through a decision framework.     

Response-based method for determining the extreme behaviour of floating offshore platforms

The accurate prediction of extreme excursion and mooring force of floating offshore structures due to multi-variete environmental conditions which requires the joint probability analysis of environmental conditions for the worst case situation is still impractical as the processing of large amount of met-ocean data is required. On the other hand, the simplified multiple design criteria (e.g. the N-year wave with associated winds and currents) recommended by API known as traditional method does lead neither to the N-year platform response nor to the N-year mooring force. Therefore, in order to reduce the level of conservatism as well as uncertainties involved in the traditional method the response-based method can be used as a reliable alternative approach. In this paper this method is described. In order to perform the calculations faster using large databases of sea states, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) is designed and employed. In the paper the response-based method is applied to a 200,000 tdw FPSO and the results are discussed.     

锚泊列阵的设计与研究

虽然随着海洋开发和浮水作业的需要而出现了动力定位的船舶和海上建筑，但锚泊装置作为定位用途，因其较好的经济性而广泛用于水深不大的海域的海上结构物的定位中。本文根据国内外专家对锚泊装置的研究成果，以布设了具有复杂地形地貌海域的１０ｋＷ潮流实验电站为例，探讨针对复杂海底地形的锚泊定位系统的设计方法，并给出完整的设计步骤     

Design of Mooring System for Oil Storage Vessels

The floating oil storage system has been proposed as a new facility for Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in China. Mooring is one of the key technologies to ensure the safety, reliability, and performance of the oil storage system. This paper describes the concept, analysis, design and reliability of the mooring system. For mooring system design of these oil vessels, analysis is essential of the behavior of the vessel in connection with mooring facilities of nonlinear resilience. A nonlinear mathematical model for analyzing a moored vessel is established and solved. Some results of numerical simulations are presented. Assessment of the safety regarding the mooring system in terms of failure probability is carried out. Another simulation model for calculating the failure probability of the mooring system is proposed. The design parameters that have an influence on the characteristics of the failure probability have been identified. The simulation results show that the mooring system has an annual reliab     

Reliability of mooring lines and piles for a permanently manned vessel in a tropical cyclone environment

The factors of safety for stationkeeping systems in current standards (ISO, API) are not derived or validated using reliability analyses. As the oil and gas exploration and production is breaking new boundaries, deploying new floating systems and moving into regions with harsher environments, it is of paramount importance to understand what level of reliability these new marine structures are achieving. This paper presents a reliability analysis of the mooring system of a Floating LNG (FLNG) vessel permanently moored and permanently manned offshore North West Australia in a tropical cyclone environment. The reliability analysis addresses both the mooring chain and the pile foundation. The analysis accounts for the long term characteristics of the environment, including the short term variability, in response to a given sea state and the variability and uncertainty in strength of the mooring chain and the pile. The stationkeeping system was analysed using detailed time domain simulations, capturing system non-linearities and low frequency oscillations as well as wave frequency responses and, thereby, reducing modelling uncertainties to a minimum.It is found that for the conditions modelled, neither the chain nor the pile meet a target reliability of 10⁻⁴/annum using the factors of safety commonly used in design following current ISO and API standards. New factors of safety are proposed to achieve this target reliability. For the pile design, one complicating factor is that current design standards do not explicitly define the exceedance probability that should be associated with the characteristic value of the undrained shear strength to be used in the design. It is demonstrated that the required factor of safety is crucially dependent on the definition of this characteristic value and on the level and the type of uncertainty in the soil strength profile. A recommendation is made regarding the definition of this characteristic value and the associated factor of safety. Furthermore, it is found that designing the mooring system to an environmental condition with a return period of 10,000 yr (as an Abnormal Limit State event), and setting the factor of safety to unity, meets the target reliability of 10⁻⁴/annum for the pile, if the characteristic undrained shear strength is a lower bound, defined in this paper by the 10th percentile value. For the chain however, this target reliability is not achieved.     

Coupled dynamic analysis of a mini TLP: Comparison with measurements

The dynamically coupled interaction between the hull of a floating platform and its risers and tendons plays an important role in the global motions of the platform and the tension loads in the tendons and risers. This is an especially critical design issue in the frequency ranges outside the wave frequencies of significant energy content. This study examines the importance of this coupled dynamic interaction and the effectiveness of different approaches for their prediction. A numerical code, named COUPLE, has been developed for computing the motions and tensions pertaining to a moored floating structure positioned and restrained by its mooring/tendon and riser systems. In this study the experimentally measured motions of a mini-TLP are compared with those computed using COUPLE and alternative predictions based upon quasi-static analysis. The comparisons confirm that COUPLE is able to predict the dynamic interaction between the hull and its tendon and riser systems while the related quasi-static analysis fails. The comparisons also show that wave loads on the mini-TLP can be accurately predicted using the Morison equation provided that the wavelength of incident waves is much longer than the diameters of the columns and pontoons and that the wave kinematics used are sufficiently accurate. Although these findings are based upon the case of a mini-TLP, they are expected to be relevant to a wide range of floating or compliant deepwater structures.     

海上浮体系泊缆自动化设计方法研究

随着智能化研究成为当今科技发展的热点,结合智能优化算法的浮体系泊系统自动化设计成为一个将现代方法应用于传统工程领域并提高设计效率的研究对象。针对浮体的系泊系统,以悬链线式系泊方式为研究对象,分析得出了系泊缆与不同选材参数之间的规律,建立系泊系统自动化设计方法,选用遗传算法作为算法基础,实现方案的智能优选,进行了有效的探索研究;开发了系泊系统自动化设计的自主程序,完成了典型的单根系泊缆的单点系泊系统以及多段组成风分布式系泊系统的研究,验证了方法的可行性,为系泊系统的自动化设计这一技术问题提供了解决方法与工程的应用手段。     

软刚臂单点系泊系统静力特性分析

软刚臂系泊系统是一种利用压载质量为浮式生产储油装置(FPSO)提供回复力的单点系泊方式。为快速准确地评估多铰接组成的软刚臂系统的受力状态,避免应用高复杂度的有限元软件,进而快速完成优化设计等任务,建立一种静力计算方法十分有必要。因此,针对由刚臂(YOKE)、柔性系泊腿和压载舱组成的刚柔多体系统,以分解组合的方式,提出一种二维静力计算方法,用以研究FPSO软刚臂系泊系统的静力特性。该方法主要依靠软刚臂的几何构型,在有限铰接约束下,形成非线性静力平衡方程,建立了压载舱式水上软刚臂单点系泊系统二维静力平衡计算算法。采用OrcaFlex、SESAM等软件开展了理论和数值对比分析,同时与系泊试验结果开展验证分析。对比结果表明,文中所提方法计算精度较高,可为软刚臂单点系泊系统的研究提供可靠支持。     

浮式海水淡化装置系留系统水动力分析

文章参考某海水淡化装置的具体参数、工作环境及其系留系统的布缆方式,利用大型海洋水动力分析软件OrcaFlex建立该海洋浮式海水淡化装置系留系统的水动力分析模型,研究该模型的运行过程,结合系留系统以及风、浪和流的联合作用,分析系缆的系泊张力变化情况和水动力,并对该系留系统的设计和施工提出指导性建议和细节性要求。     

混合模型试验等效水深截断系统优化设计研究

进行了深海海洋平台混合模型等效水深截断系统优化设计试验研究,优化方法选用混合离散变量模拟退火法,目标函数为截断系统和原系统的静力特性相似程度。以一个转塔式系泊浮式生产系统为例进行了等效水深截断系统优化设计计算。     

基于风洞试验的FPSO风载荷特性研究

当FPSO服役于目标油田时,将受到风浪流的作用力。其中,风力给FPSO一个恒定的静力,使其偏离原来的位置。风力计算在FPSO系泊系统的分析过程中是非常重要的。设计人员常常参考OCIMF进行风力计算,或者参考API规范得出。OCIMF为针对油轮的计算规范,但使用OCIMF计算FPSO风力及流力的方法,与FPSO的适应性仍需要进一步论证。API规范针对海上浮式系统,其计算风流力的方法使用也非常广泛,其原理为将FPSO上部各个模块风力叠加得出。以FPSO风载荷为研究对象,开展了风洞模型试验,获得了典型FPSO风载荷特性曲线,并将试验结果分别与OCIMF结果和API规范计算结果进行对比分析,最终给出FPSO风力计算方法的建议。本数据可用于FPSO的风力计算,也可为FPSO运动、系泊的设计研究提供参考。     

Mooring optimization of floating platforms using a genetic algorithm

This paper presents a new procedure for the optimization of the mooring design of floating platforms, in which an automatic design sequence is also established. Regarding the optimization philosophy, the following aspects are dealt with:

• The optimization of the platform heading and its mooring pattern, taking into account the environmental force spreading;

• optimum line length or line tension for each mooring line, associated to the optimization of the mooring line materials and sizes.

Basically, the main goal of this paper is to introduce a new method, which will provide the quickest way to find the best mooring system, defined here as that which minimizes platform responses.A genetic algorithm (GA) is applied in this contribution, and this paper describes exactly the procedure of developing a GA code directed toward the solution of mooring design optimization problems. In order to prove the efficiency and the vast potential of the proposed algorithm as a design tool, sample moorings are analyzed for different environmental conditions and the final results, including the time required to run them, are presented.