A Preliminary Study of a Rigid Semi-Submersible Fish Farm for Open Seas

Abstract

The development of reliable fish farm structures for open seas becomes more and more important. One of the challenges is to design a robust structure to withstand the harsh offshore environmental loads. This paper investigates a semi-submersible type offshore fish farm system for open seas. This system consists of a semi-submersible support structure with pontoons and braces, a catenary mooring system and net cages. The support structure is designed to be rigid to resist severe offshore conditions. A preliminary hydrodynamic and response analysis is carried out for this concept. The linear hydrodynamic properties using different composite models with panel and Morison elements are computed. Based on the hydrodynamic analysis, linearised frequency-domain and coupled time-domain analysis are performed to predict the extreme motions of the support structure and the extreme tensions in the mooring lines. The results indicate that the frequency-domain method underestimates the extreme responses, and the couplings between the structure and the mooring system need to be considered in the time-domain. Responses using various hydrodynamic models are also compared to evaluate the influences of the viscous effects from the pontoons and the nets of this fish farm concept.