Mathieu stability of offshore Buoyant Leg Storage & Regasification Platform

Abstract

Increasing demand for large-sized Floating, Storage and Regasification Units (FSRUs) for oil and gas industries led to the development of novel geometric form of Buoyant Leg Storage and Regasification Platform (BLSRP). Six buoyant legs support the deck and are placed symmetric with respect to wave direction. Circular deck is connected to buoyant legs using hinged joints, which restrain transfer of rotation from the legs to deck and vice-versa. Buoyant legs are connected to seabed using taut-moored system with high initial pretension, enabling rigid body motion in vertical plane. Encountered environmental loads induce dynamic tether tension variations, which in turn affect stability of the platform. Postulated failure cases, created by placing eccentric loads at different locations resulted in dynamic tether tension variation; chaotic nature of tension variation is also observed in few cases. A detailed numerical analysis is carried out for BLSRP using Mathieu equation of stability. Increase in the magnitude of eccentric load and its position influences fatigue life of tethers significantly. Fatigue life decreases with the increase in the amplitude of tension variation in tethers. Very low fatigue life of tethers under Mathieu instability proves the severity of instability.