Session: Construction & Industrialization

Paper Number: 163754

163754 - From Synthetic Fiber Rope Testing to Mooring Design of Floating Offshore Turbines 

Abstract: 

Synthetic ropes are more and more preferred for mooring FOWT due to their unique performance and lower cost. However, their performance comes at the price of more complex behaviors that pose new design challenges.

FOWT tension leg platform moored with pair of synthetics legs without any length adjustment component may show unbalanced load between individual legs. To address this problem, it is required to precisely control the length difference between legs to ensure appropriate load sharing, and as such control the leg elongation. This requires to have a proper characterization of the synthetic fiber rope used.

For column-stabilized FOWT platform moored using synthetic fiber ropes, pre-stretching and/or re-tensioning to mitigate permanent elongation of the mooring lines is usually a key design aspect. Rope testing campaigns for properly characterizing rope elongation are a very effective strategy to guarantee the mooring system performance and minimize operational cost.

A testing campaign has been completed to validate a rheological model of synthetic ropes used for FOWT tension leg platform. Using this rope model, numerical simulations where set-up to assess the correctness of the load sharing within each pair of mooring legs of the FOWT. ​

This paper will describe the development of the rheological model, the testing procedure elaborated to identify each model’s input and how it has been incorporated into the FOWT mooring design process.

Presenting Author: Jean-Luc Pelerin SBM Offshore

Presenting Author Biography: M. Pelerin has more than 15 years of experience in the offshore industry working on R&D subjects. His main fields of expertise are fluid dynamics, data analysis and synthetic ropes.

Authors:

Jean-Luc Pelerin SBM Offshore
Renaud Daran Ekwil
Julien Prieur Ekwil