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Although in most vessels the usual function of a moonpool is a passage for production lines, equipments and divers, the moonpool may be used as a device to reduce the vertical motion of floating structures as it can be observed in published studies. From these published works one may say that changes of the moonpool’s internal geometry modify the behavior of vertical oscillation of the water inside the moonpool. Looking for a “hydrodynamic design of the monocolumn-moonpool”, Petrobras has carried out a set of numerical and experimental tests with monocolumn hulls provided with moonpool. Some of these results have been published by the authors in the literature. To increase the comprehension of the dynamics of the joint motion, fluid and structure, numerical results were obtained using a commercial code based on the potential theory and a commercial code based on the solution of Navier-Stokes equations. The paper presents results of these experiments and analyzes the behavior of the coupled motions of mono-columns and the vertical motion of the water inside the moonpool, comparing the experimental and the numerical results.

In response to the need for better designs in less time and at low costs, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is becoming an integral part of the vessel’s design process. Recent studies have shown that CFD techniques can be used with relative success for the problem of ship resistance prediction. This paper reports on the simulation of the flow around a typical catamaran hull by means of CFD computations. The numerical model used in the simulations was developed in full scale with the experimental model in order to eliminate any source of scale effects. The paper presents a discussion on grid configuration and an analysis of the performance of the numerical model in describing the characteristics of the in-between hulls flow. The results obtained were validated against experimental data.

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The present work carries out a detailed comparison between numerical computations for the flow around the keel and the bulb of a sailboat and some newly obtained laboratory data. Two typical turbulence models are tested: the eddy-viscosity SST model and the second-moment model BSL-RSM-ω. Hot-wire anemometry (HWA) and particle image velocimetry (PIV) are used to characterize the flow around the keel and the bulb of a yacht. The experiments are conducted in a low speed wind tunnel. Measured flow parameters include the mean velocity profiles and second order moments. Both turbulence models are shown to perform well regarding mean velocity and global predictions. Turbulence data predictions, however, are shown to be erroneous by at least one order of magnitude.

This paper discusses the investigations conducted to develop the hydraulic design of the flow conditioner of the current generation system of LabOceano. The performance of different flow conditioner configurations were numerically investigated by means of computational fluid dynamics techniques. The numerical results were validated against experimental data, showing a good performance of the numerical model in predicting the main flow characteristics. It was observed that undesirable high angles of incidence of the flow occur upstream of the flow conditioner, indicating that the culvert geometry is not of much help to contribute to the conditioning of the flow. However, the results demonstrate that, in spite of such an adverse inflow conditions, the classical solution based on the perforated plate concept works very well.

A floating structure is proposed to act as a dry wellhead completion support for a mono-column design developed by Petrobras: the MONOBR FPSO. After the discussion of the design issues involved, the MONOBR design is introduced and the peculiarities affecting the insertion of a floating structure into its moonpool are analyzed. In what follows, the main characteristics of the proposed floating structure layout are presented in the context of its purpose of allowing for the effortless vertical motion relatively to the housing mono-column unit, followed by the considerations pertinent to the ballast system devised to allowing for the adequate operation, by the characteristics of the roller mechanisms proposed to ensure the aligned motion desired and by the analysis of the structural issues and the proposed structural layout.

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