Time series prediction of mooring line top tension by the NARX and Volterra model

To minimize the computation burdens of long-term analysis, the mooring line top tensions under various short-term sea states were predicted using the pre-calculated nonlinear time domain analysis results of some selected sea states. A nonlinear autoregressive with an exogenous input (NARX) technique was introduced with a finite nonlinear memory length to predict the top-tension of a mooring line of the box-type floating production storage and offloading (FPSO). The NARX was designed in such a way that it takes the floater’s motions as its input and produces the mooring line top tension as an output. After training the NARX using the pre-calculated time series of the motions and tensions of some selected sea states, the tension time histories of different sea sates were predicted and compared with the direct time domain analysis results. In addition, to explore the nonlinearity of the system and its contribution to the response, the transfer functions of different orders were extracted after expanding the NARX equation using a Taylor series expansion. The nonlinear contributions coming from both the 3^rd and 5^th order were significant.