Effect of Various Mooring Materials on Hydrodynamic Responses of Turret-Moored FPSO with Emphasis on Intact and Damaged Conditions

Abstract

The behavior of different mooring line materials has a significant influence on the behavior of the mooring system and, consequently, the dynamic responses of the floating platform. Although there have been previous studies on FPSOs and their mooring systems, the influence of mooring line failure scenarios associated with different mooring materials has received less attention, particularly for turret-moored FPSOs with taut moorings. Thus, this paper investigates the behavior of different mooring line materials in intact, single-line, and double-line damaged conditions on the hydrodynamic responses of the FPSO, restoring behavior, mooring, and riser tensions considering wave conditions in the Gulf of Mexico. Mooring lines including Aramid, HMPE, polyester, and steel wire were considered in the middle segment, which was the segment of interest in this study. The restoring forces of the mooring system were found to increase with increasing mooring stiffness, and a higher stiffness resulted in a higher loss of restoring force in the case of single-line failure. In all cases, the submerged weight and material stiffness had a significant influence on dynamic responses, mooring tension, transient responses, riser tension, and especially on the ability of the mooring system to resist the case of single-line failure. Each material was observed to behave differently in each degree of freedom (DOF), showing the necessity to pay close attention to the selection of mooring material for specific objectives.