Second Order Loads on LNG Terminals in Multi-Directional Sea in Water of Finite Depth

Abstract

Large LNG terminals are designed to be installed in an offshore area approximate to harbors where the water is of finite depth and waves are multi-directional. The terminal can be of a barge type LNG/FRSU including accommodations, gas preconditioning and liquefied plant, a number of storage tanks and offloading facilities. It serves also as a support to moor a LNG carrier during offloading operations. In the design of such mooring system of LNG/FRSU and LNG carriers in a zone of shallow water, one key issue is the accurate simulation of low-frequency motions of the system to which the second-order wave loading is well known as the main source of excitation. The computation of second-order wave loading in multi-directional waves of finite waterdepth is considered here. New formulations obtained recently in [1] for the computation of second-order loads in mono-directional waves are extended to the case of multi-directional waves. Both the classical near-field formulation and the new middle-field formulation developed in [1] are used and numerical results are compared. Unlike the usual near-field formulation giving results of second-order loads with poor convergence, the middle-field formulation provides an accurate method for the computation of vertical components.