Strake Design and VIM-Suppression Study of a Cell-Truss Spar

Abstract

Along with the development of offshore technology, Spar platforms have been widely used in deep-sea oil and gas exploitation. Due to the deep draft cylinder hull piercing into the water, Spar platforms could be subjected to Vortex-Induced Motions (VIM) in certain current conditions. To mitigate VIM, helical strakes are used on the Spar hulls, and they have been proved to be effective. Cell-Truss Spar is a new concept of Spar platform which has recently been put forward by State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering (SKLOE) of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It combines some good qualities of the Cell Spar and Truss Spar designs, aiming to bring in the lighter truss section and heave plate damping feature of the Truss Spar to obtain satisfactory heave motion performances, while reduce manufacture and installation difficulties by means of cell concept. Since the Cell-Truss Spar is a new design concept that has physical characteristics which are different from the existing Spars, the global motion performance should be carefully studied and verified. Researches about the VIM performance of the Cell-Truss Spar have been carried out recently (see Wang Ying et al, 2008, etc). Since it is still at the concept design stage, the Cell-Truss Spar configuration is considered without detail strake design in these studies. For the Cell-Truss Spar, which is still on concept design stage at the present time, the design and optimization of the helical strakes is very important to control the VIM response and improve the hydrodynamic performance. In this paper, strake design and VIM-Suppression Study of the Cell-Truss Spar is carried out. As a result of the unique characters on the hull, the outer surface of the Cell-Truss Spar does not form a regular cylinder. Hence, the strakes should be designed more carefully. In this study, four different configurations of strake groups are put forward and studied, and the one with the highest efficiency is chosen to be applied on the Cell-Truss Spar. The fluid field around the hard tank of the hull, the vortex disturbance near the strakes, and the forces acting on the hard tank with different strakes are simulated by CFD method, and the strake efficiency is assessed through model test combining with CFD computation. The optimized strake configuration is finally chosen, and the VIM performance of the strake-equipped Spar is studied.