Nonlinear mooring line induced slow drift motion of an ALP-tanker

Abstract

A tanker moored to an articulated loading platform (ALP) is modeled by a 2-DOF system. The mooring line between the ALP and tanker is represented by an unsymmetric, piecewise-nonlinear restoring function. Forced vibrations of this system are investigated using direct numerical integration. The highly nonlinear characteristics, including multiple solution, subharmonics, and bifurcations are discussed. Slow drift oscillation could occur under harmonic excitations due to nonlinearities of the systems. The sensitivity of the dynamic response of the strong nonlinear system with respect to system parameters and initial conditions is examined.