No abstract

The piston mode fluid resonance in the narrow gap between a moored floating body and a bottom-mounted vertical wall is numerically investigated based on a two-dimensional potential flow model and viscous numerical simulations. This study focuses on understanding the effect of mooring stiffness on the coupling dynamics of the gap resonance and the sway or heave motion of the floating body in regular waves. Numerical studies show that the resonant wave amplitude in the gap is reduced by the sway and heave motions. The reduction is highly dependent on the mooring stiffness. Two resonant frequencies are confirmed, and both increase with the mooring stiffness. Different modes of motions are identified in terms of the phase difference between the oscillatory motions of the gap flow and the floating body. Higher harmonic components of responses are found for the specific mooring stiffness. The performance of potential flow models in predicting resonant responses is revisited based on the understanding that the overall damping effect consists of two parts: (1) radiation damping and (2) viscous dissipation. It is confirmed that a potential model is also able to produce reasonable predictions as radiation damping plays a dominant role, for example, at the second resonant frequencies of coupling the gap resonance with the sway motion. Otherwise, as viscous dissipation dominates radiation damping, noticeable over-predictions by a potential model occur as recognized before, for example, the present results at the second peak response of gap resonance with the heave motion. The relative viscous dissipation is quantified with the reflection coefficient of viscous numerical results, while the radiation damping is quantified based on a specially designed radiation potential model with inputs of viscous numerical solutions.

This paper summarizes our recent collaborative/competitive works on floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) among four universities including Osaka Prefecture Univ., Osaka Univ., Yokohama National Univ., and Nihon Univ. The tasks assigned to each member were to develop the respective FOWT designs which could support 5MW class wind turbine, then to fabricate a scale model based on their own concept, and finally to evaluate the performance by tank tests under prescribed environmental (wind and wave) conditions. Osaka Prefecture Univ. adopted TLP concept, Yokohama National Univ. semi-submersible concept, Nihon University SPAR concept while Osaka Univ. also adopted semi-submersible, however, with single-point mooring. All the measured data were collected and compared among the four designs. It turned out that: (1) All the proposed deigns suffice criteria in terms of motion performance which were assumed at the beginning of the study. (2) The TLP type shows the most favorable performance among the four while the SPAR type shows largest acceleration in almost all the range of environmental conditions. The large acceleration may pose a problem of maintainability. (3) The SPAR type suffers the gyration effects more than the other types. (4) The RAOs of motions under combined wind and wave loads are almost the same as those under only wave loads for all the concepts but the single-point moored semisubmersible. (5) The difference of the RAOs for the single-point moored semisubmersible may be ascribed to the larger coupling effects between the main floater and the mooring system under the combined loads.

A pontoon type very large floating structure has elastic deformations in ocean waves. The deformation is larger than that of a semi-submergible type one. Thus, a pontoon type one will be installed to tranquil shallow water field enclosed by breakwaters. Moreover, a semi-submergible one will be applicable to development at offshore field. The authors has developed a pontoon type VLFS with an OWC (oscillating water column) type wave energy absorption system. This can be install to offshore field being deep water relatively. Such VLFS can reduce not only the elastic deformation but also the wave drifting forces. However, it is very difficult to reduce the wave drifting forces effectively because an effect of the reduction depends on the wave energy absorption. Therefore, the authors propose an air supported type VLFS. This idea has been already proposed. However, it wasn’t handled a flexible structure. Such an air-supported structure makes to transmit many waves. Therefore, the wave drifting forces may not increase. In addition, the elastic deformation may decrease because pressure distribution due to the incident waves becomes constant at the bottom of the structure, i.e. the pressure is constant in a same air chamber. We develop the program code for the analysis of the hydrodynamic forces on the VLFS with the air cushion. The potential flow theory is applied and the pressure distribution method is used to the analysis of the wave pressures. The zero-draft is assumed in this method. The pressure and volume change of the air cushion are linearized. In this paper, basic characteristics of the elastic deformations of the air-supported flexible floating structures are investigated. We confirm the effectiveness, and discuss behaviors of the water waves in air chamber areas.

No abstract

Barge-type platforms with moonpools are a promising type of foundation for floating offshore wind turbines due to their good seakeeping performance. In this paper, the mean wave drift force on a barge-type vertical-axis floating wind turbine with multiple moonpools was investigated through physical model testing and numerical calculations using WAMIT. The focus was on the characteristics of mean drift load and its optimization potential. The present numerical results indicated that the application of moonpools was useful in reducing horizontal mean drift force at specific frequencies, and the reason was ascribed to the significant radiation effect of the resonant water oscillations in moonpools. The observed reduction effect on mean drift force was shown to be dependent on the viscous damping of moonpool resonance. The experimental results showed that the maximum response of the mean sway drift force was reduced by the gyroscopic effect of rotations of the vertical-axis wind turbine, and this reduction effect became stronger as the rotating speed of the wind turbine increased, but was weakened as wave amplitude increased. The comparisons between experimental data and potential flow predictions indicated that viscous effects should be taken into account to reasonably estimate the mean wave drift forces on barge-type floating wind turbines.

In this paper, we will discuss about the designing process and the motion characteristics of the spar type offshore wind turbines. When considering a spar type structure for offshore wind turbines, it is important to take a lot of elements into consideration which have not yet been considered in the case of oil and gas platforms. In this research, we used the following standards to conduct our tests. The limit of the heel angle was 5 degrees when the wind turbines are generating in the rated state. When designing the substructure for this research we have decided to go with a substructure that operates in depth of 100m or more. Following the conditions above we have designed the spar type offshore wind turbine used for this research. In order to compare the simulated result we have created a scale model and performed tank tests under various conditions. Also we observed unexpected motion characteristics in certain mooring arrangement. So we will touch these subjects in this paper.

An aircushion type floating structure can prevent to enlarge the wave drifting force restraining the hydroelastic response of it in water waves. The floating structure should be large scale to incident waves in order to make the best use of such advantages, i.e. it is a very large floating structure. The linear potential theory is useful to easily handle the wave force etc. on the aircushion type floating structure theoretically because it is predicted that its theory can give good results of behaviors of water elevation within aircushions and pressure and of wave loads on the structure qualitatively. The authors have confirmed from our past model experiments that non-linear effect does not always increase but for some exceptions. A prediction method of hydroelastic responses for the aircushion type very large floating structure by using the three-dimensional linear potential theory is shown in this paper. The validity of the method is proven and the application of the method is investigated by comparing the theoretical results with the results of the past model experiments.