Journal of Marine Science and Application, Vol.6, No.3, September 2007, pp. 17-23 DOI: 10.

1007/s11804-007-7016-2

Development of study on the dynamic characteristics of deep water mooring system

TANG You-gang, ZHANG Su-xia, ZHANG Ruo-yu, and LIU Hai-xiao
School of Civil Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China Abstract: To meet the needs of those exploiting deepwater resources, TLP and SPAR platforms are used in some areas and are considered excellent platforms in deep water. However, many problems remain to be resolved. The design of mooring systems is a key issue for deep water platforms. Environmental loads in deep water effect the physical characteristics of mooring line materials. The configuration and analysis of mooring systems involve nonlinearity due to this fluid-solid coupling, nonlinear hydrodynamic forces, and their effects on stability of motion. In this paper, some pivotal theories and technical questions are presented, including modeling of mooring lines, the theory and method of coupled dynamics analysis on the mooring system, and the development of methodologies for the study of nonlinear dynamics of mooring systems. Further study on mooring systems in deep water are recommended based on current knowledge, particularly dynamic parameters of different materials and cable configuration, interactions between seabed and cable, mechanisms of mooring system response induced by taut/slack mooring cables, discontinuous stiffness due to system materials, mooring construction, and motion instability, etc. Keywords: mooring in the deep water; platform in the deep water; dynamic response; stability of motion CLC number: U674.38 Document code: A Article ID: 1671-9433(2007)03-0017-07

1 Introduction1
Currently, there are several kinds of mooring systems used to maintain the buoys position, which can be classified into catenary mooring, catenary anchor leg mooring, single anchor leg mooring, tension leg mooring, dolphin-fender mooring according to the mooring patterns and sing-point mooring, multiple-point mooring following the number of mooring lines. In a general way, the mooring pattern should be designed according to the amplitude of force, water depth, total length of line, existence of buoyant or caisson, topography and sea floor conditions. At present, the multiple-point mooring system and catenary mooring, and nylon line with pretension and composite rope are adopted widely in deepwater platform. TLP and SPAR are considered as excellent types for platforms in the deep water, and several platforms have been built in the Gulf of Mexico and the North
Received date: 2007-04-09. Foundation item: Supported by the NSFC under Grant No. 50679051 and NO.50639030.

Sea. The engineering practice shows that, with increasing of the water depth, the loads on the line increase sharply, which results in rising of instability, so the platform mooring becomes one of the key technologies. In recent years, the method and technology on mooring in the deep water are in full flourish to meet the need of exploiture of deepwater platform.

2 Main structure and mooring system

2.1 The main structure and mooring system of TLP Tension-leg platforms consist of five parts: topside, column, caisson, tension-leg mooring system and anchor foundation. In general, the topside, column and caisson are combined and called the main body. The topside is above the water surface and connects the caisson with four or three columns that are of common cylinder subjecting to the wave, current loads, providing sufficient structural stiffness for the platform. The buoyancy of platform supplies the column and caisson below the water surface. The caisson connects the end touching with column, forming toroidal shape. Each tension leg involves 2~4

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tendons, with the upper end fixed on the main body and lower end anchored to the pontoon frame or the top of the foundation, forming a one-to-one correspondence with the column. The buoyancy at tension-leg platform is much more than its weight; some of them compensate the weight and the residual balances the pretension. The pretension acting on the tension leg makes the tension leg in a state of taut. Larger pretensions in the tension leg eliminate most of the out-of-plane motions such as roll, pitch and heave, providing a relatively steady and safe environment for the operation. 2.2 The main structure and mooring system of SPAR At present, the Spar platform consists of six parts: topside, shell, buoyancy, centerwell, risers and mooring. The spar generally can be divided into three parts: topside, main body and mooring system (including anchor foundation) based on the characteristics of structure, in which the topside and main body are combined to hull. A spar is a deep-draft floating cylindrical structure similar to a very large buoy whose dimension is usually between 20 to 40 m and draft is up to a hundred meter. The center of gravity lies below the buoyant centre. Because of the deepdraft, the amplitude of heave and surge are usually small. The four major parts of mooring system in the deep water are mooring line, fairlead, chain jack and foundation. The upper end of the line passes through a fairlead located on the hull below the water surface, then extends up the outside of the hull to chain jacks at the top and the lower end is anchored to the sea floor with a suction pile. The pretension in the line is controlled by the chain jack. The spar relies on the potential energy of the lines and the inertial force of the hull to maintain its position. The mooring line of TLP keeps taut all the time because of the immense pretension while one of the spars holds semi-slack and semi-taut configuration for relative smaller pretension. The mooring attachment point is nearly a geometrical

center, where the amplitude of motion is slight. The piles foundation and suction foundation are adopted at the bottom. With increasing of the depth, traditional steel chain is not applicable. The weight of steel mooring wires in very deep waters may become too much of a penalty on the vessel payload and, furthermore, the volume of hull may be expanded with the cost sharply increasing; Additionally, the catenary configuration covers a wide area, which has a strong impact on the laying out of pipelines in the water and navigation of ships. To improve the economic performance of the platform, new materials and theory must be introduced and the core issue is to introduce synthetic lines. When synthetic ropes are used, it is possible to reduce the mooring footprint, and hence reduce the overall spread of the sub-sea installation and weight of lines. There are three different mooring styles proved to offer considerable scope for mooring in very deep waters: 1) Catenary-chain mooring, used in water depth below 1,000 meters; 2) Synthetic rope mooring; 3) Composite-line mooring, which is constitutive of different materials, such as chain-nylon line-chain.

3 A review of dynamic characters and response prediction for mooring systems

The key point of deepwater mooring technology is to correctly estimate the tension in the line, which is induced from the wave, current loads and stretch of the platform. The couple between mooring line and platform is nonlinear dynamic system. The response prediction of tension relates to the calculation of platform motion, identifying of dynamic parameters, material properties, stress-strain relation and restoring stiffness of rope, which becomes the hot issues of the mooring system study. 3.1 Models of calculation and analysis There are three models used widely at present: catenary model, lumped-mass-and-spring model based on the multiple-body dynamics and slender-rod

TANG You-gang, et al: Development of study on the dynamic characteristics of deep water mooring system

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model. 3.1.1 Catenary model The catenary model is a kind of quasi-static one, and the equation is as follows[1]:

the two segments. The force vector Fi includes tension forces in the two segments, drag force, gravitational force and buoyant force. Any other external forces, if they exist, can be included in this term as well. The dynamic tension in the mooring line is induced by inertial force, stretch, geometric stiffness and elastic stiffness, however, in practice, the elastic stiffness is omitted in most of the compliant offshore structures and all parameters can be considered in the model of spring-mass. 3.1.3 Slender rod model The slender-rod model was presented first by Garrett[3]. In this model, the rod can be of elasticity and arbitrary configuration[4], with kinds of loads and tension acting on it, including the motion of rod, hydrodynamic force resulted from the external fluid and gravity. Arcandra developed this model for calculation of mooring force with nonlinear stress-strain relation [5].The equation is as follows:

lw h ( h + 2 TH P ar sinh( P TH

TH ) l' + P h( h + 2 TH )) = 0, P

(1)

where lw is the unstretched total working length of the line, l ' is the stretched length, h is the water depth,
TH is the horizontal tension and P is the weight of the

catenary per unit length of the line in the water. The quasi-static model of catenary chain is very effective and has been used widely, but in the deep water it is not applicable because of the dynamic stiffness. 3.1.2 Lumped-mass-and-spring model The lumped-mass-and-spring model has the following advantages when compared with other methods: 1) Straightforwardness. The modeling and mathematical formulation has clear physical interpretation. To understand it, one doesnt need to have too much mathematical knowledge. 2) Economy. A moderate amount of computation time is needed. 3) Versatility. Simple as it is, the method can solve many different types of problems, including those of non-linearity, unsteady state, non-uniform cable and oscillatory current. By invoking Newtons law of motion, the equation for the ith node on the line is[2] : 1 mi ai + e 1 aiN 2 i+ 2
i +1/ 2

Mr + ( Br '' ) ( r ' ) = { f Ah (1 + Cm N ) v f +
'' '

Cd Dh N ( v f v ) N ( v f v ) + g f Ah w ey . 2

(3) The governing equation is

r' r' = 1+ 2 T , EAs

where, r is the position vector of the rod; B = Es I s is the bending stiffness of the mooring cable; v f and v f are fluid velocity and acceleration of point s , respectively;
v and v are cable velocity and acceleration of the point s,

respectively;

M = s As I + f Af Cm N

is

effective

1 + e 1 aiN 2 i 2 and e

1 2

= Fi .

(2)

mass matrix; (T + p f Af ) Bk 2 is effective tension;

' NI r r ' is the operator due to the axial

Where, mi represents the mass of one cable segment,

ai is its acceleration, e
1 i+ 2 1 i 2

are the virtual

component of the cable; I is identity matrix; k is local bending curvature of the rod. 3.2 Study on the effects of taut-slack for cables in the deep water The marine cables can only bear tension but cant bear

masses of the entrained fluid between the nodes

i, i + 1 and i 1, i respectively, aiN
i +1/ 2

and aiN

i 1/ 2

are components of vector ai in normal directions of

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compressive loading, so it will become taut-slack alternatively under wave loads. Actually, when some mooring cables are broken, the environment loads dont exceed the design loads, failure of cable is related to the sudden change of load caused by taut-slack of cables. The research shows that the sudden change of tensions is usually several times to dozen times more than the mean tension[6]. When the tension is equivalent to the drag force distributed on the cable, a cable will slack, and under periodic loads, the motion of cable will slack and taut alternatively, the tension in the cable might become large. So the sudden change of restoring force caused by uncontinuity restoring stiffness of cable will lead to nonlinear problem to the whole mooring system. Under the long-period wave, the slack-taut phenomenon of mooring system will be aggravated when the load exceeds a critical value. Tjavarass research indicated [7]that the cable will be in the taut and tension remains positive when the incident wave amplitude is small. However, if the amplitude of incident wave is larger than a threshold value, the zero tension and maximum tension will alternatively occur in the cable, this is the snapping response in the tension of cable. Huang studied the impulse loads under alternative taut-slack conditions by using the model of Bi-linear string[8-9]. He neglected the effect of floating structure, the cable was simplified into the model subjected to periodic sinusoidal excitation at the top end of cable[10-11], the snap tension of the mooring cable was calculated The results show that the magnification effect of tension is due to the shock. Experiments show that[12], under sinusoidal excitation and quasi-static condition, the result calculated by the quasi-static method is near the experiment result. But under the impact condition, the impact tension is much larger than the result calculated by the quasi-static method. At present, there is still lack of effective method to predict the taut-slack tension properties of cable. It is not clear that the effect mechanism of mooring system

response is caused by the change of taut-slack cable under wave load. The key questions of mooring theory are to determine optimal pretension, set up a reasonable mathematic model, predict the system response and the variation trend of tension under snap load, and set up the couple analysis model considering the sudden change properties of the mooring tension. 3.3 The tension caused by coupled motion of mooring system and floating body The interaction between platform and mooring cable is that the platform drives the motion of cable, and the cable brings restoring force to the platform. Especially under the long-period wave loading, it is important to restrain the motion of platform from cables, which results in rapid growth of tension in the cable. So it is an important problem to improve the accuracy of prediction for platform motion and tension of cable under long-period swell. The research about coupled motion of mooring cable and platform is mainly focused on the heave, pitch and surge. For the Spar platform, the cable is symmetric around the platform, so the research of heave, pitch and surge motion can be treated as a 2-D problem. The surge period of Spar platform is about 150~300 s, the heave period is about 30 s, and pitch 40~80 s. So the surge-heave coupling and surge-pitch coupling are usually considered to be weak, and the surge can be studied alone, but the motion of heave and pitch is close to couple. At present, there is not a true platform-mooring cable coupling analysis method. There are two calculation methods for platform motion: 1) The top endpoint of the cable is considered to be the boundary, and the motion of cable is calculated alone, the cable stiffness is determined, and the equivalent spring stiffness of cable is adopted at the attachment point of the platform, then the motion of platform is calculated; 2) The cable is considered as a rod with tension and bending capabilities, the motion of platform is regarded as the boundary of the rod element, the analysis model of platform-rod element is set up. The cable tension can be obtained by both methods of 1)

TANG You-gang, et al: Development of study on the dynamic characteristics of deep water mooring system

21

and 2), also the platform motion can be calculated. But the discontinuous stiffness of cable caused by taut-slack effect is not considered in both methods. The deep water platform can avoid the surge resonance motion in low frequency under the first order wave force in general case, but in irregular seas, the difference frequency component of second order wave force tends to near natural frequencies of horizontal mode of platform or the same, thus lead to horizontal resonance of the platform in the low frequency. On the other hand, the sum-frequency component of second order wave force tends to near the vertical vibration frequency of mooring system, and leads to the vertical resonance of mooring system. The heave motion of structure in large amplitude might cause fatigue damage to the mooring system under vertical wave force acting on the bottom. A.K.Agarwal and A.K.Jain studied the coupling dynamic response of Spar platform in the deep water under regular wave[13]. The Spar is modeled as a rigid body with 6 degrees-of-freedom, connected to the sea floor by multi-component catenary mooring lines. The response-dependent stiffness matrix consists of three parts: 1)the hydrostatics provide restoring force in heave, roll and pitch; 2)the mooring lines provide the restoring force that are represented by nonlinear horizontal; 3)Vertical springs. The study shows that: modeling the nonlinear force-excursion relationship of the mooring lines with different slopes gives reasonable accurate behavior of spar responses. Inclusion of vertical spring plays an important role in the dynamic behavior of Spar response. It can be seen from the study that neither drag coefficient, inertia coefficient nor structural damping ration variations affects the heave response, whereas these parameters do influence the response, when only horizontal excursion is considered. Due to the effects of nonlinear drag force of cable in the water, the dynamic behaviors of cable in the water are quite different from the dynamic behaviors of cable in the air. If the strain-stress relation is linear, then, the only source of non-linearity behaviors is from geometric configuration of cable in the air, but

the nonlinearity characteristics of cable in the water are from geometric configuration and nonlinear loads of fluid. If the cable vibrates slowly, the effect of elastic stiffness can be neglected[14], but the effect of fluid resistance, fluid mass and hydrostatic pressure are also very important under some conditions for the cable in the water[15]. 3.4 Study on the damping of mooring system The slow surge response can be reduced by about 40% by mooring damping[16-17], it is more obvious in the deep water environment. The height of stability of Spar platform is small, so the amplitude of the rolling is mainly affected by damping. Although the mooring damping has only a little effect on the platform motion damping, it cant be neglected in the whole platform damping, especially for the environment in the deep water. The damping caused by mooring lines is basically related to the initial phase angle[18]. E. Huse investigated experimentally the damping of surge in low frequency. It is found that the damping of surge in low frequency from mooring system is about 80 percent of total damping, the damping of remained 20 percent consists of drift damping and viscous damping on the hull. The motion in high frequency of moored vessel results in the increase of damping for low frequency surge [19]. William obtained the damping of mooring system by calculating the energy of mooring system absorbed from the motion of platform[20]. It is found that the mooring-induced damping appears to be very different for vertical motions and horizontal motions of the fairlead. The only two dissipative mechanisms modeled here are the cross-flow drag of mooring line and internal damping of mooring line. Damping from the former requires the motion transverse to the mooring line and that from the latter requires motion along the mooring line. And the damping decreases with increasing in drag coefficient for high pretensions because in this range, the transverse motion response has higher impedance than the stretch response, and the damping increases with increasing

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in drag coefficient for low pretensions. The variation in damping with a period of excitation is similar. At low pretensions where stretch is not important, the damping increases with frequency of excitation. At higher tensions and at higher frequencies, the reverse is true. Sarkar and Taylo determined the drag-induced damping in mooring cable due to combination of the first and second-order wave excited motion of a moored vessel by statistical linearization[21]. L.Taos research shows that[22] a vertical cylinder experiencing springing vibration is of different characteristics of heave damping in two different regimes in the range of amplitude of oscillation. At very low amplitude of oscillation, the heave damping force is independent of the amplitude of oscillation, whereas a definite dependence on the velocity has been found as amplitude increases. So, the assumption of linear damping in frequency-domain analysis is not applicable for large-amplitude heave motion because of the viscous effects on hydrodynamic damping. In reference[23], the wave forces, added mass and radiation damping are calculated by the hydrodynamic software package called SESAM based on the potential theory. Nonlinear viscous heave damping forces are calculated by directly solving Navier-Stokes equation based on the finite difference method. So, it is known that the properties of mooring damping are too complex to find an effective method to identify it at present.

investigated, the methods of determining dynamic stiffness changing with the vibration period should be studied. 2) The interaction between seabed and cable, nonlinear materials and nonlinear mooring construction should be studied in general, and the coupled mooring system and motion of platform should be considered; finally, the prediction method of platform coupling motion and the calculation method of dynamic tension should be set up. 3) The effect mechanisms of the mooring system response induced by taut-slack mooring cable under wave load should be studied. The snap tension of mooring system should be predicted, while the platform moved with large amplitude under extreme sea states, and the cable deformed seriously when it taut-slack acutely. 4) The discontinuous stiffness due to system materials and mooring construction should be considered, and the dynamic response of mooring system should be solved, the effect of discontinuous stiffness on mooring force and the safety of mooring cable should be evaluated. 5) The motion instability, response jumping of motion, stability, bifurcation, chaos and other condition due to complex dynamic properties should be studied. The studies will lay the foundation for the design, control of motion and security evaluation of mooring system.

References
[1] KIM B K. Stability analysis and design of spread mooring systems[D]. Dearborn: University of Michigan, 1999. [2] HUANG Shan. Dynamic analysis of three-dimensional marine cables[J]. Ocean Engineering, 1994, 21(6): 587-605. [3] GARRETT D L. Dynamic analysis of slender rods [A]. In Proceedings of the 1st International OMAE Conference[C]. Dallas, 1982. [4] PAULLING J R, WEBSTER W C. A consistent, large-amplitude analysis of the coupled response of a TLP and tendon system [A]. In Proceedings of the 5th OMAE Conference[C]. Tokyo, 1986. [5] ARCANDRA B S.Hull/mooring/riser coupled dynamic analysis of a deepwater floating platform with polyester lines[D]. College Station: Texas A&M University, 2001. [6] JIANG Kaihui. Study on buoy mooring system[D]. Tianjin: Tianjin University, 2005(in Chinese).

4 Summary
The development of platform in the deep water promotes the study of mooring dynamic theory. The researches aboard are of much help to us. Based on the progress of theories and methods, the flowing studies should be done in the future: 1) The dynamic parameters of different materials and cable configuration should be studied, including the nylon cable, chain-cable-chain construction and so on. The transverse and axial damping properties should be

TANG You-gang, et al: Development of study on the dynamic characteristics of deep water mooring system

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[7] TJAVARAS A A, ZHU Q, LIU Y, et al. The mechanics of highly-extensible cables[J]. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 1998, 213(4): 709-737. [8] NIEDZWECKI J M, THAMPI S K. Snap loading of marine cable systems[J]. Applied Ocean Research, 1991,13: 2-11. [9] HUANG Shan, VASSALOS D. A numerical method for predicting snap loading of marine cables[J]. Applied Ocean Research, 1993, 15: 235-242. [10] VASSALOS D, HUANG S. Dynamics of small-sagged taut-slack marine cables[J]. Computers and Structures, 1996, 58(3): 557-562. [11] HUANG S. Stability analysis of the heave motion of marine cable-body systems[J]. Ocean Engineering, 1999, 26: 531-546. [12] SUHARA T, KOTERAYAMA W, TASAI F. Dynamic behavior and tension of oscillating mooring chain[A]. 13th annual Offshore Technology Conference[C]. Houston, 1981. [13] AGARWAL A K, JAIN A K. Nonlinear coupled dynamic response of offshore spar platform under regular sea waves[J]. Ocean Engineering, 2003, 30: 517-551. [14] PAPAZOGLOU V J, MAVRAKOS S A. Non-linear cable response and model testing in water[J]. Journal of sound and vibration, 1990, 140(1): 103-115. [15] LI Xiaoping, WANG Shuxin. Dynamic model of marine cable systems[J]. Journal of Tianjin University, 2004, 37(1): 69-73. [16] HASLUM H A, FALTINWEN O M. Alternative shape of spar platforms for use in hostile areas[A]. Offshore Technology Conference[C]. Houston, 1999. [17] YILMAZ O, INCECIK A. Extreme motion response analysis of moored semi-submersibles[J]. Ocean Engineering, 1996, 23(6): 497-517. [18] FAN Ju, HUANG Xianglu. The analysis of mooring line dynamics[J]. Ship Building of China, 1999,1:13-20(in Chinese). [19] HUSE E, MARINTEK A S, MATSUMOTO K. Mooring line damping due to first and second order vessel motion[A]. Proceedings of the 21st Annual Offshore Technology Conference[C]. Houston, 1989.

[20] WEBSTER W C. Mooring-induced damping[J]. Ocean Engineering, 1995, 22(6): 571-591. [21] SARKAR A, EATOCK R T. Effects of mooring line drag damping on response statistics of vessels excited by firstand second-order wave forces[J]. Ocean Engineering, 2000, 27: 667-686. [22] TAO L, THIAGARAJAN K, CHENG L. On the parametric dependence of springing damping of TLP and spar columns[J]. Applied Ocean Research, 2000,22(5): 281-294. [23] TAO Longbin, LIM K Y, THIAGARAJAN K. Heave response of classic spar with variable geometry[J]. Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering, 2004, 126: 90-95.
TANG You-Gang was born in 1952. He is a professor of Tianjin University. His current research interests include dynamics of ocean engineering and design of platform in deepwater.

ZHANG Su-Xia was born in 1978. She is working for doctors degree in Tianjin University. Her current research interests include vibration and control, nonlinear dynamics, design of ocean engineering structures etc.

ZHANG Ruo-Yu was born in 1981. She is working for doctors degree in Tianjin University. Her current research interests include design of ship and ocean engineering structures etc.