Comparative Analysis on Fatigue Damage of Deepwater Hybrid Mooring Line

Abstract

In the deepwater exploitation of oil and gas, the replacement of polyester rope for the wire in chain-wire-chain mooring line is proved to be fairly economic. Previous studies are mainly conducted to hydrodynamic analysis and dynamic response calculation, but there are few studies on the fatigue damage analysis of hybrid mooring line. Take the mooring system of a Spar platform as the research object, and the multi-component mooring lines are usually made up of chain-wire-chain. The representative mooring line has been considered while other conditions are kept unchanged, and top end tension-static offset characteristic curve of the two mooring lines are consistent as much as possible, meanwhile the polyester rope is adopted as the substitute for the wire, then the comparative calculation on fatigue damage of deepwater hybrid mooring line is carried on. The analysis of Spar platform response is carried out in which the wave force is calculated under diffraction theory. After the establishment of two-dimensional nonlinear finite element dynamic model of the hybrid mooring line, the calculation on stiffness of the hybrid mooring line is accomplished through the iterative method based on the empirical formula proposed by Del Vecchio in 1992. The mooring line and seabed interaction is based on the hypothesis of rigid seabed. The fluid drag force and inertia force on the mooring line are calculated according to the Morrison formula. The dynamic analysis is executed through time-domain nonlinear finite element method accounting for the response of the Spar platform which is calculated as above. The stress time histories of the hybrid mooring line in each short-term sea state of South China Sea area are calculated, and then the rain flow counting method is employed to obtain the fatigue load spectrum in each short-term sea state. The Miner linear cumulative law model is used to compare the fatigue damage of the hybrid mooring lines in long-term sea state which consists of tens of short-term sea states. The results show that the using of polyester rope as the substitute for the wire can significantly improve the fatigue resistance.