Optimization of mooring systems in the context of an integrated design methodology

Abstract

This work describes an enhanced mooring optimization procedure, oriented towards recent floating production systems (FPS) for oil & gas exploitation in ultra-deep-water scenarios, which may present a large number of risers in an asymmetric layout. Acknowledging that the risers are the key component of an FPS, the optimization procedure is associated to an integrated mooring-riser design methodology; thus, instead of simply minimizing the platform offsets and/or the costs of the mooring system itself, one of the main objectives is to obtain a mooring configuration that ensures the integrity of the risers. Other highlights of the optimization procedure include the following aspects: Enhancements in the modeling of the optimization problem (including the definition of design variables, objective function and constraints that are relevant for such actual applications); The use of the PSO optimization algorithm associated to the ε-constrained method to efficiently handle the constraints; Enhancements in the evaluation of candidate solutions, by full nonlinear time-domain dynamic Finite Element simulations with coupled models; and the implementation in a parallel computing environment to deal with the high associated computational costs. A case study considering an FPS representative of actual applications in deepwater scenarios is presented to illustrate the practical application of the optimization tool.