A floating tied system for an offshore airport

This paper presents a new system for a floating offshore airport. It consists of an assembly of precast boxes, each of them tied with a cable system. The (tension) cable system acts as a bracing against any lateral forces during airport operation. It also prevents the boxes from oscillating and moving during the airport construction and operation. The space inside each box can be utilized for other purposes. A top slab system consisting of precast and cast in situ concrete slabs will form the platform of the airport. Finally, a proposed method of construction is also presented. The new system offers an easier construction method and allows future airport extension and even relocation.     

Reliability-based comparative study for mooring lines design criteria

The characteristic environmental load effect for the design of mooring systems of floating units can be defined by means of three procedures: (a) the one associated to an extreme sea state with a given return period, (b) the worst one from a set of sea states on a contour line associated to a return period or (c) the extreme one based on response statistics for a long-term period. This work presents the result of a reliability-based partial safety factor calibration study for a LRFD mooring line design criteria considering the three approaches mentioned above. The calibration exercise is applied to three FPSOs considering North Sea environmental conditions and different water depths: 200, 800 and 3000 m. The mooring systems investigated take into account mooring lines made up of chains and polyester ropes. It is shown that, among all cases investigated, the design procedure based on the long-term response is the one that presents less scattered reliability indices around the target level.