Loading on a Fixed Vertical Slender Cylinder in an Oblique Wave-Current Field

Abstract

A study of the loading of an oblique wave-current field on a slender cylinder in a 3D flow frame is reported in this paper. The three dimensional expressions describing the characteristics of the combined wave-current field in terms of mass, momentum and energy flux conservation equations are formulated. The parameters before the interaction of the oblique wave-free uniform current and current-free waves are used to formulate the kinematics of the flow field. These expressions are also employed to formulate and calculate the loads imparted by the wave-current fluid flow on a bottom mounted slender vertical cylinder. A comparison of the obtained results due to the present model to those obtained using three other models being used in the offshore industry is shown for a range of the normalized current parameters. One of these three models is proposed by the American Petroleum Institute (API), which is based on a superposition principle. Morison et al equation is deployed for the load computations in all cases. Comparisons among the obtained results in a normalized manner are shown and discussed.