The South China Sea contains tremendous oil and gas resources in deepwater areas. However, one of the keys for deepwater exploration, the investigation of deepwater floating platforms, is very inadequate. In this paper, the authors studied and compared the hydrodynamics and global motion behaviors of typical deepwater platforms in the South China Sea environment. The hydrodynamic models of three main types of floating platforms, e.g. the Semi-submersible, tension leg platform (TLP), and Truss Spar, which could potentially be utilized in the South China Sea, were established by using the 3-D potential theory. Additionally, some important considerations which significantly influence the hydrodynamics were given. The RAOs in frequency domains as well as global motions in time domains under time-varying wind, random waves, and current in 100-y, 10-y, and 1-y return period environment conditions were predicted, compared, and analyzed. The results indicate that the heave and especially the pitch motion of the TLP are favorable. The heave response of the Truss Spar is perfect and comparable with that of the TLP when the peak period of random waves is low. However, the pitch motion of Truss Spar is extraordinarily larger than that of Semi-submersible and TLP.
Different structural forms of TLP have different capacities and different scopes of application. Each type of TLP is globally designed. The hydrodynamic parameters and dynamic responses of different types of TLPs are studied considering the effect of different directions of wave and tendon stiffness. The unsteady potential flow theory and boundary element method are used to analyze flow field and hydrodynamic calculation. The software AQWA suite which is a set of advanced hydrodynamic analysis programs is used to perform the numerical simulation of TLP motion response. The results show that the dynamic responses of different types of TLPs are observably different. Changes of wave directions and added stiffness from tendons have certain effect on the motion response of a TLP.
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