Wave-Induced Loads on Very Large FPSOs at Restricted Water Depth

The effects of water depth on the wave-induced vertical bending moment and shearing force on a very large FPSO are studied by experiments and computations for regular and irregular waves. The restricted water depth composite Green function is employed to develop a program for the computation of the hydrodynamic coefficients of the very large FPSO at shallow water. A thrce-segment model with 1 : 100 scale is tested in the State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University for the verification of the nmnerical method. The experimental and computational results show that the water depth has a substantial effect on wave-induced loads. The wave-induced vertical loads increase with the decrease of water depth for shallow water. Especially, for ultra-shallow water these loads increase very evidently with the decrease of water depth. The long-term prediction values of wave-induced vertical loads increase with the decrease of the ratio of water depth to draught. The long-term prediction values of wave-induced vertical loads are about 8% larger than those for deep water when the ratio of water depth to draught is 3.0. However, water depth hardly affects the longterm prediction values of wave-induced loads when the ratio of water depth to draught is larger than 5.0.

Wave-Induced Loads on Very Large FPSOs at Restricted Water Depth