Mooring System Design Considerations for FPSOs

Ken Huang
American Bureau of Shipping, Houston, USA

1. INTRODUCTION
ABSTRACT
This paper identifies the critical issues related to mooring
systems designed for ship-shaped vessels, such as the Floating
Production, Storage and Offloading units (FPSOs), in general
and under the effects of Revolving Tropical Storms (RTS) in
particular. FPSOs have been employed worldwide as an
economic solution for the development of offshore oil and gas.
Most current applications are in relatively benign
environmental areas, such as Southeast Asia, West Africa and
Offshore Brazil near the Equator. Some applications are in
temperate latitudes, e.g. the North Sea, in which the design
events are winter storms. Winter storms have a limiting wind
speed of around 100-mph and are more predictable. In
contrast, RTSs, i.e. Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM)
and Typhoons in the South China Sea (SCS), can evolve rapidly
from Category 1 with sustained wind speeds of just over 74
mph to Category 5 with wind speeds over 155 mph. The much
more unpredictable nature of tropical cyclones and the
consequences of mooring failure causing possible property loss
and environmental damage have prompted the concern of
regulatory bodies for utilizing FPSOs in the GOM.
This paper addresses design options for FPSO mooring
systems. Firstly, the design environmental conditions of winds,
currents and waves encountered in GOM and SCS are
discussed. Secondly, mooring design issues and options are
outlined. Finally, advantages and possible drawbacks of
proposed options are highlighted. It is hoped that suggestions
in the paper will assist the designer in enhancing the reliability
of FPSO mooring systems.

Floating Production, Storage and Offloading units (FPSOs)

have been employed worldwide as an economic solution for the
development of offshore oil and gas. Most of the applications are
conversions of ocean-going oil tankers in relatively benign
environmental areas, such as Southeast Asia, West Africa and
Offshore Brazil near the Equator. Some applications are in
temperate latitudes, such as the North Sea, in which the design
events are winter storms. Only a few FPSOs are used in the
tropical cyclone prone areas of the South China Sea and Offshore
Northwestern Australia.
As operators are considering using FPSOs for the development
of deep water leases in the Gulf of Mexico, the effect of hurricanes
on the station-keeping capability of a mooring system is becoming
a major concern of regulatory bodies. The consequences of a
mooring system failure for an FPSO could involve collisions of an
FPSO with adjacent offshore installations and might result in major
oil spills. This risk is considered high on possible property loss
with grave environmental impact.
The ship-shaped vessels used as FPSOs generally have the
advantages of large oil storage capacity and high stability margin.
The vessel motions, however, in both wave energy spectral period
range (3-25 seconds) and slowly varying period range (>50
seconds) are inevitably large due to the excessive water plane area
of a ship-shaped vessel. In addition, the high length-to-beam ratio
of a ship-shaped vessel necessitates the vessel be able to
weathervane into the prevailing environmental loads due to wind,
current and waves in order to minimize the loading on the mooring
system. Therefore, the critical design issues of a mooring system
for an FPSO are:

KEYWORDS: FPSO, Mooring System, Revolving Tropical

Storm, Line Dynamics, Reliability, and Progressive Failure.

Line dynamics due to six degrees of freedom wave frequency

vessel motions (in surge, sway, heave, roll, pitch and yaw),

Low frequency vessel motions in surge, sway and yaw, and

Effects of non-collinear environments of wind, current and

waves on the responses of the vessel and its mooring system.
From the designers point of view, there are options in the
selection of vessel size, design pretension, turret location, mooring
pattern, line configuration and anchoring point. The proposed
design options can reduce the possibility of progressive failure of a

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Ken Huang

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mooring system under extreme design events. This in turn will

enhance the reliability of a mooring system designed for FPSOs
operating in geographic areas with tropical environments.

GOM
SCS
NNS

108
127
87

40
44
53

13-18
13-20
15-22

3.0
4.0
3.0

Table 1: Typical Design Environmental Criteria

2. DESIGN ENVIRONMENTAL CRITERIA
The mooring system of an FPSO is usually designed to survive
in a 100-year return period event in a combination of wind, current
and waves for a specific project site. Figure 1 shows major oil
producing offshore areas of the world, where FPSOs are
anticipated.

In selecting the design environmental criteria for a vessel

allowed to weathervane, special attention is to be given to the noncollinear environments of wind, current and waves and the design
wave period range. This is due to the sensitivity of the
environmental mean loads to the directionality of environments off
the bow for a ship-shaped FPSO vessel with a large length-to-beam
ratio. In addition, the wave-induced vessel motion responses are
also very sensitive to wave directions relative to the vessel and the
design wave periods. Non-collinear environments of wind, current
and waves shall be investigated in order to define the worst loading
case. Natural periods of a vessel with its mooring system will also
dictate vessel motion responses. For a given design significant
wave height, the lowest design wave period in the design range
may produce 60% to 80% higher mooring line tension than that of
the longest design wave period. This effect of wave period range
on mooring line tensions is more profound in shallow water
because the mooring system becomes stiffer.

3. VESSEL DESIGN CHARACTERISTICS

Figure 1: Major Oil Producing Offshore Areas of the world

There are two basic design environmental phenomena to be
considered in different geographic areas:

Winter storms, and

Revolving tropical storms.

The winter storm systems, such as those occurring in the Northern

North Sea (NNS) and Offshore Eastern Canada, are much more
predictable. They usually have a long duration and a large fetch
area, but with a limiting wind speed rarely exceeding 100 mph (87
knots). In contrast, revolving tropical storms, called Hurricanes in
the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) or Typhoons in the South China Sea
(SCS), are shorter in duration and smaller in fetch area. The
intensity of tropical cyclones, however, can evolve rapidly from
Category 1 with sustained wind speeds of just over 74 mph (64
knots) to Category 5 with wind speeds over 155 mph (135 knots).
The design wave heights of winter storms can be higher than those
of tropical cyclones because the winter storm duration is usually
much longer than that of the swiftly moving tropical cyclones.
The high uncertainty of tropical cyclones requires a mooring
system designed with redundancy to prevent its progressive failure
if the 100-year return period design environmental criteria are
exceeded.
Table 1 gives typical design environmental criteria for some
geographic areas. As shown in this table, the 100-year return
period design wind speeds of tropical cyclones in GOM and SCS
are much higher than that of a winter storm in NNS.

Geo. Area:

1-Min. Wind
(Knots)

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Sig. Wave Ht. Peak Period

(Feet)
(Second)

Current
(Knots)

The vessel size is usually dictated by the oil storage capacity

and the topside layout as the functional requirements of an offshore
project. The physical dimensions of a vessel and its general
arrangement of deck and hull will in turn determine the wind,
current and wave forces and moments acting on the vessel. The
hull shape and geometry of a vessel together with its mass
properties in terms of the center of gravity location and radii of
gyration in roll, pitch and yaw will define the hydrostatics and
motion response characteristics. Subsequently, these vessel design
characteristics will be used to determine the mooring system
responses under the design environmental conditions.
In selecting the vessel size it is important to keep the natural
periods in surge and sway for the total system (vessel with its
mooring system) longer than at least three times the design wave
spectral peak period. This will minimise the possible dynamic
amplification of total system responses under the effects of wave
frequency energy in the period range of 3 to 25 seconds. To keep
the natural periods in pitch and roll longer than the design wave
spectral peak period is also desirable for reducing wave frequency
motions of an FPSO. In most cases, this is, however, difficult to
achieve. Bilge keels have, on occasion, been introduced to dampen
roll and pitch motions.

4. VESSEL OFFSETS AND DESIGN PRETENSIONS

Under the design environmental conditions of wind, current
and waves, the total vessel offset and motions consist of three
components:
1)

Mean steady offset and equilibrium vessel heading due to

static mean forces and yaw moment of wind, current, and
waves,

2)

Low frequency motions due to slowly-varying wind and wave

drift forces, and

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3)

Wave frequency motions due to first order wave excitations.

There are mooring line tensions corresponding to each of these

vessel-offset positions, headings and motions.
The mean offset and low frequency motions are a function of
the mooring system stiffness. The mooring system stiffness can be
adjusted by varying the initial design pretension of a mooring
system under no environmental loading. The higher the design
pretension and the mooring system stiffness the smaller the vessel
offset will be. Usually the riser design will dictate the vessel offset
criteria for the mooring system design. The unnecessarily high
design pretension, however, will impose larger total line tension
and thus result in lower safety factors for a mooring design. If
flexible risers, such as lazy-s shaped risers, are used, much larger
vessel offsets can be allowed with reduced design pretensions.
Alternatively, the design pretensions can be reduced before the
evacuation of personnel on board an FPSO. With reduced design
pretensions, the maximum total line tension is also reduced. This
will greatly enhance the reliability of a mooring system under a
severe tropical storm.

yaw moment coefficients for wind, current and waves are changing
with the instantaneous vessel headings. In the above analytical
approach, however, a steady state mean vessel heading under the
design non-collinear environment is usually assumed for both
frequency and time domain line dynamic analyses.
The scenario of non-collinear environments can be more
accurately simulated using a time domain approach in system
analysis. In order to accurately predict vessel responses at each
time step, the analytical procedure must be capable of incorporating
wind, current and wave drift force and yaw moment coefficients at
various vessel headings, and using these to update the mean loads
on the vessel at each time step. It is important to accurately predict
not only instantaneous mean loads on the vessel, but also timedependent low frequency vessel forces and damping due to wind,
current and waves. Therefore, a fully coupled dynamic analysis in
time domain for mooring system responses with line dynamics will
become the state-of-the-art analytical approach. More research and
development work is required in this area. Model tests can be used
to verify analytical results of mooring responses especially under
non-collinear environments.
Following APIs recommended practice (API, 1996), both
ABS (ABS, 2000) and DnV (DnV, 1996) propose the following
combinations for the total vessel offset and mooring line tensions:

5. ANALYTICAL PROCEDURES
For FPSO mooring systems, both vessel/mooring system and
line dynamic analyses are to be performed. A simplified method of
line dynamic mooring analysis is outlined in six steps:

Combination 1: mean + significant low-frequency + maximum

wave-frequency values, or

Combination 2: mean + maximum low-frequency + significant

wave-frequency values.

(1) Calculate static environmental mean forces and yaw moments

acting on the vessel,
(2) Find the resulting static equilibrium vessel position and
heading with associated mean mooring line tensions,
(3) Determine low frequency vessel motions at the static
equilibrium vessel position and heading,
(4) Find mooring line tensions due to low frequency vessel
motions quasi-statically,
(5) Perform line dynamic analysis to derive dynamic line tensions
due to six degree-of-freedom wave frequency vessel motions,
and
(6) Combine mean, low frequency and wave frequency tensions
according to industry practice.
The line dynamic analysis can be performed in either
frequency domain or time domain. In general, the frequency
domain approach is used in conceptual and preliminary stages of
mooring design and evaluation because of its efficiency. The time
domain approach is recommended for the final design.

The higher value of the above two combinations will be used as the
design value.

6. TURRET LOCATION AND VESSEL WEATHERVANING

The turret structure on an FPSO is fixed in space to the seabed
by the mooring system. Mooring lines are attached to a turntable at
the turret structure to allow the vessel to weathervane. The turret
structure can be located at any position between the bow and the
midship.
The turret location will determine the ease of
weathervaning capability of a vessel into the prevailing
environment. The farther the turret is located away from the midship, the easier it becomes for the vessel to weathervane. For the
turret located at or near the bow, the vessel can weathervane
passively by itself without thruster assistance. At the same time,
however, the closer the turret is placed to the bow, more pitchinduced vertical motions can be expected at the top of a mooring
line. The large vertical motions at the turret location will increase
line dynamic tensions. The total line tension will be approximately
20% higher for the turret located at or near the bow as compared
with a turret location of about one third of the vessel length from
the bow as shown in Figure 2 below.

It is important to note that the above analytical procedures

were developed mainly for conventional semisubmersible-type
mooring systems, which have linear mooring responses. For yawsensitive ship-shaped vessels such as turret moored FPSOs,
however, the nonlinearities involved make these systems more
difficult to manage with the traditional procedures. For turret
moored FPSOs weathervaning into prevailing environments,
especially when analysed under non-collinear environments, there
are no steady state mean loads acting on the vessel. The force and

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Ken Huang

Flare

Living Quarters

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Stern Thrusters

Bow Thruster

Figure 2: General Arrangement of an FPSO

Figure 3: Grouped Mooring Pattern
In Norway it is preferred to have living quarters located upwind
of the process plant, thereby preventing the turret from being
located near the bow. As shown in Figure 2, when the turret is
located at about one third of the vessel length from the bow, the
vessel cannot weathervane by itself and thruster assistance is
required for vessel heading control. This FPSO is equipped with
one bow and two stern thrusters to assist the turret mooring system.
Therefore, these FPSOs are manned during 100-year return period
design events. They are subject to additional possible failures of
power generators, thrusters and control/monitoring systems for
thruster assistance.
In the tropical cyclone prone areas, such as the GOM and the
SCS, personnel are usually evacuated before a severe tropical storm
reaches the project site. Hence, the turret has to be located at or
near the bow so that the vessel can weathervane passively without
thruster assistance. This will greatly enhance the reliability of a
mooring system designed for an FPSO.
Introducing a submersible buoy along a mooring line near the
turret location can reduce the dynamic amplification of line
tensions due to large vertical motions at the bow turret location.
This design option of mooring line configuration will be further
discussed in Section 8.

7. MOORING PATTERN
Traditionally, the equally spread mooring pattern has been
employed for mobile offshore drilling units (MODUs) based on
semisubmersibles. This is due to the more uniform environmental
loading acting on a semisubmersible from any headings relative to
the vessel. There is no need to weathervane a semisubmersible into
the least loading direction. Besides, there is only one drilling riser
on a MODU.
An FPSO can carry many production risers through the turret.
The number of mooring lines and risers, which will be placed
through the turret, is limited by the physical space of a turret. The
layout of mooring lines may pose interference concern with the
risers. To alleviate this concern a grouped mooring pattern as
shown in Figure 3 has been proposed.

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Figure 4: Equally Spread Mooring Pattern

As opposed to the equally spread mooring pattern, shown in
Figure 4, the maximum line tension is approximately 20% lower
and the maximum offset is about 5% less under the worst one-line
damaged condition. Therefore, the grouped-spread mooring
pattern will provide better redundancy (with a higher safety factor
on line tension) against possible progressive failure of a mooring
system.

8. MOORING LINE CONFIGURATION

For the mooring line configuration, conventional mooring lines
generally consist of the combination of chain and wire rope.
Submersible buoys and/or clump weights may be introduced along
a mooring line for various design considerations.
Figure 5 shows a typical mooring line configuration in shallow
water. In shallow water (less than 100m), an all chain system can
be used. To save cost the grounded portion may be replaced with
lighter wire rope for a permanent mooring system. The long
mooring line length is required in shallow water. The extra line
length is not required for preventing the uplift force at the anchor
position. The line length is used to provide the elasticity required
for stretches, otherwise the mooring line will become too stiff to
take large dynamic loads from vessel motions.

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Torque compatibility with other components (wire or chain) in

a mooring leg, and

Reliability of vertically loaded anchors (VLAs) as discussed in

Section 9 below.

With these concerns, the submersible buoys (as shown in

Figure 7) can be used as an alternative to overcome deep water
mooring problems. These buoys will reduce vertical loads acting
on the turret structure due to the heavy weight of mooring lines in
suspension in deep water. The mooring system stiffness is thus
increased when the vertical load at the fairlead from the weight of a
mooring line is reduced by the submersible buoys.

Figure 5: Shallow Water Mooring Line Configuration

Figure 6: Deep Water Mooring Line Configuration

As shown in Figure 6 in deep water (greater than 300m), the
wire rope is used for most of the suspended portion of a mooring
line to increase the stiffness and reduce the top tension of a
mooring line. In ultra deep waters (greater than 2000m), even the
conventional chain-wire combination will become too heavy and
too soft in horizontal stiffness to resist environmental loads.
To cope with these problems, the industry is starting to use
synthetic moorings, and ABS has developed guidelines (ABS,
1999) for these moorings. On the practical side, Petrobras has used
polyester taut leg mooring systems for several deep-water projects
in Offshore Brazil (Ma, et al, 1999). Also shown in Figure 6, the
polyester taut leg with a pile or vertically loaded plate anchor
(VLA) can greatly reduce the spread of a mooring line from the
fairlead at the turret to the anchor position. The relatively light
weight of submerged polyester ropes is beneficial in reducing the
weight of a mooring system in deep water. The polyester taut leg
mooring system is generally stiffer than the catenary wire-chain
system, especially true in deep waters, because its stiffness is
provided by the line elasticity, not the line weight as the catenary
wire-chain system. In spite of these advantages, there are concerns
about the polyester taut leg mooring system (Huang and Lee,
1998):

Endurance and possible deterioration for long term use,

Compression damage during installation and design storms,

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Figure 7:Mooring Line Configuration with Submersible Buoys

The intermediate buoy near the turret will keep the mooring
line in a more perpendicular direction to the large vertical motions
at the turret location. This will alleviate the line dynamic effects on
line tensions due to large wave frequency vessel motions.
In addition, these buoys in a mooring system can further
enhance:

Installation and maintenance operations, and

Clearance from risers or any other obstacles.

As shown in Figure 7, the mooring line segment below the riser

buoy can be pre-installed with the anchoring system to reduce the
time required to hook up the mooring system with an FPSO at the
project site. By slackening the line tension, these buoys will bring
the mooring line closer to the water surface for inspection and/or
maintenance. These buoys can also keep the mooring lines clear
from adjacent risers or subsea pipelines to prevent possible
interference.
Of course, there is extra cost associated with the introduction of
these buoys in a mooring system. Additional design consideration

Ken Huang

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for the intermediate buoy is that its submerged depth should be

deep enough from the still water surface to alleviate wave loads
acting on the buoy.

Reduced design pretensions and/or slackening design

pretensions before the evacuation of personnel when a severe
tropical storm is forecasted to reach the project site,

9. ANCHORING SYSTEMS

Grouped mooring pattern with higher factors of safety on line

tensions with one line broken design cases,

Conventional mooring line configuration consisting of wirechain combination with submersible buoys, and

Conventional drag embedment anchors without uplift force at

the anchor position to allow anchor movement without
causing total loss of anchor holding capacity.

The anchoring points fixed to the seabed are the critical part of
a mooring system for keeping an FPSO on location. Depending on
soil conditions and the required performance, there are various
types of anchors that can be selected. There are basically two types
of anchors:

Conventional drag embedment anchors, and

Anchors, which are designed to resist vertical loads, such as

pile, suction and vertically loaded plate anchors (VLAs).

There are concerns about VLAs designed to take vertical loads.

These anchors may exhibit complete loss of their holding capacity
after pulling out from the seabed.
This is in contrast to the
conventional drag embedment anchors, which can still retain
considerable amount of holding capacity even after some
movement under the environmental extremes. In addition, there
will always be some uncertainties involved in the analysis of the
site-specific soil conditions. Therefore, ABS (Huang and Lee,
1998) requires higher safety factors for ultimate design holding
capacities of VLAs as compared with conventional drag
embedment anchors. The safety factors of both types of anchors
are listed below for comparison:

The mooring design options proposed in this paper will help to

enhance the reliability of mooring systems designed for FPSOs in
tropical environments. By adopting these mooring design options,
it is hoped that the risk level of an FPSO operating in the Gulf of
Mexico will be comparable to those of other oil production
systems, such as TLPs, SPARs, etc.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author is grateful to the ABS management for their
encouragement in the writing of this paper. The author would like
to thank Mr. Alan Cain for reviewing and preparing the figures
presented in this paper.

(a) Intact Design Environmental Condition

(1) VLA Anchors - 2.0
(2) Conventional - 1.5

REFERENCES

(b) One- line Broken Design Environmental Condition

(1) VLA Anchors - 1.5
(2) Conventional - 1.0

American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), 2000, Guide for Building

and Classing Floating Production, Storage and Offloading
Systems (Revised Draft).

Conventional drag embedment anchors are considered to have

some consequential advantages over VLAs. In case the design
environmental criteria would be exceeded and causing the anchor
to move, these drag anchors still can retain most of their holding
capacity. In addition, with anchor movement the grouped mooring
lines will adjust line tensions among themselves to reduce the peak
line tension of the most-loaded line.

American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), 1999, Guidance Notes on

the Application of Synthetic Ropes for Offshore Mooring.
American Petroleum Institute (API), 1996, Recommended
Practice for Design and Analysis of Stationkeeping Systems for
Floating Structures, API RP 2SK, Second Edition.
Det

10. CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents a summary of mooring design experiences.
In particular, technical issues of turret mooring systems designed
for FPSOs have been discussed. Design options for enhancing the
reliability of a mooring system in general and under the effects of
revolving tropical storms in particular have been proposed. The
mooring design options presented are summarized as follows:

Norske Veritas (DnV), 1996, Position Mooring

(POSMOOR), Part 6 Chapter 2, Rules for Classification of
Mobile Offshore Units.

Huang, Ken and Lee, Ming-Yao, 1998, Experiences in

Classification of Deepwater Mooring Systems for Floating
Installations, OTC 8770.
Ma, Wei, Huang, Ken, Lee, Ming-Yao and Albuquerque, Sergio,
1999, On the Design and Installation of An Innovative
Deepwater Taut-Leg Mooring System, OTC 10780.

Selection of vessel size to have natural periods in surge, sway,

roll and pitch longer than the design wave spectral peak
period, if possible,
Passive mooring system with turret structure located at or near
the bow without the need to have thruster assistance for
weathervaning,

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Ken Huang

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