Automated Design of a Tension Leg Platform with Minimized Tendon Fatigue Damage and its Verification by a Fully Coupled Analysis

Abstract

This paper presents the efficient hull shape of a Tension Leg Platform (TLP) developed by a fully automated hull optimization procedure. Optimization algorithms vary selected form parameters of the desired hull shape and find an optimum of the objective function within the provided constraints ensuring the resulting design to be technically feasible. As an initial design, a TLP installed in the Gulf of Mexico was is selected for the hull shape optimization. The TLP hull shape was optimized with regard to fatigue damage of the most loaded tendon due to top tension. The resulting design shows remarkably enhanced design qualities with minimized wave loads and motions as well as fatigue damage compared to the initial design. As a verification, the improved hydrodynamic performance of the optimized hull shape of TLP was investigated by a fully coupled time domain dynamic analysis considering second-order wave forces and nonlinear viscous forces as well as nonlinear tendon dynamics.