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Coupled analysis of FPSO and CALM buoy offloading system in West Africa

Conference Paper · June 2014

DOI: 10.1115/OMAE2014-23118

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 Proceedings of the ASME 2014 33rd International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering
OMAE2014
June 8-13, 2014, San Francisco, California, USA

OMAE2014-23118

Coupled Analysis of FPSO and CALM Buoy Offloading System in West Africa

Youwei Kang Liping Sun

Harbin Engineering University Harbin Engineering University
Harbin, Heilongjiang, China Harbin, Heilongjiang, China
kangyouwei@hrbeu.edu.cn sunliping@hrbeu.edu.cn
Zhuang Kang Shuhong Chai
Harbin Engineering University Australian Maritime College
Harbin, Heilongjiang, China Tasmania, Australia
kangzhuang@hrbeu.edu.cn s.chai@amc.edu.au

the results show that CALM motion plays an important role on

ABSTRACT
fatigue damage and life of OOL under different sea states.
FPSO and CALM (Catenary Anchor Leg Mooring) buoy
offloading systems are being extensively employed in water field INTRODUCTION
of West Africa. In this paper we did some research on the response New field developments tend to go into deep water in West Africa,
of FPSO and CALM offloading systems under special environment where the pipeline infrastructure for exporting the product does not
conditions in West Africa. It is found that Swell dominate sea state exist. The alternative to pipelines will then to be export the product
has much larger effects on wave frequency motions of FPSO than directly into export tankers via an offloading buoy system.
responding results introduced by Wind Sea dominate sea state, and
squall and current will introduce large horizontal motions of FPSO,
such as surge and sway. As for CALM, swell and wind sea mainly
affect its heave and roll motions, respectively. Due to its little wind
area, CALM does not show great response to Squall which is the
extreme environment condition for FPSO though.

By comparing the results from OOL (Oil Offloading Line) dynamic

analysis and quasi-static analysis, it could be that OOL dynamic
effect has little influence on motions of FPSO. But it can bring
large changes of responses of CALM because of its small water Figure 1 Schematic View of offloading System
displacement which indicates coupled analysis of the whole system
Since the first deep water export system was installed on the
is necessary
GIRASSOL field (Angola) in 2001, this offloading system has
Besides, investigations on OOL fatigue have also been done, and been extensively applied in West Africa, like the BONGA field

1 Copyright © 2014 by ASME

(Nigeria) and the KIZOMBA field (Angola)[1]. All these export mooring lines and risers (and estimate fatigue), it is essential that
systems are based on the concept of a large surface buoy, shaped, in mooring line dynamics are taken into account.
most cases, like a flat cylinder. These buoys are anchored to the sea
With the comparison of results from the simulations and the model
bed by an array of semi-taut mooring systems and support several –
tests, Ir.J.L.Cozijn[6] indicates that the fully dynamic coupled
generally two -mid-water export lines that typically take up a
simulations show a much better correspondence with the model test
“w-type” configuration or a “u-type” suspended below the wave
results than the quasi-static simulations. It is concluded that for the
zone [2]. For the mild environment condition of West Africa, all
simulation of the behavior of a moored CALM buoy in waves a
these offloading terminals are connected to spread moored FPSO,
fully dynamic coupled mooring analysis is essential.
which is shown in Figure2.
Sangsoo Ryu and Arun S. Duggal[7] research CALM Buoy vertical
The offloading system is a coupled dynamic system and the
motions through numerical modeling and model test. It is found
response of each component will be influenced by coupling of first
that a time-domain fully coupled analysis can capture the viscous
and second order wave loading on the system as a whole.
drag effect of skirt. And compared to frequency-domain analyses,
Furthermore, hydrodynamic and mechanical coupling also exists
time-domain fully coupled analysis predicts the buoy motion
between the various components of the system. Many research
behavior very well.
have been done about the offloading system, and some conclusions
are drawn. It can be seen from these works having been done that the research
on offloading system now is mainly specific to character of CALM
C. Blanc and J.-L. Isnard[3] gives a general outline description of
or coupled analysis of CALM and mooring system. It has been
some export systems. They explain what the key design drivers are
widely known that the total mass and the stiffness of the OOL (oil
and describe the design process. The coupled motion response in
offloading lines) and mooring lines are considerably compared to
waves and fatigue in anchor lines and export lines are supposed to
the inertia and hydrostatic stiffness of the deep water offloading
be important issues. The paper highlights the major limitations of
buoy. The dynamic effect of OOL and mooring lines has great
the present systems, and describes the various concepts recently
coupling effect on CALM buoy motion, while the motion of FPSO
developed in the Industry and discusses their relative merits and
also has certain influence on OOL. So it is very essential to do fully
drawbacks.
coupled analysis of the whole system.
Michael O’Sullivan[4] discusses CALM (Catenary Anchor Leg
West Africa Sea has a mild environment condition -- the significant
Mooring) buoy-based offloading systems with emphasis on the
wave height of 100 year loop is 3.6 m. And there is a special wave
prediction of CALM buoy motions and the critical design and
in West Africa named Swell, a series of surface gravity waves that
analysis requirements for offloading lines. Recent developments in
is not generated by the local wind. Swell waves often have a longer
first and second order coupled response analysis are presented.
wavelength and a narrower range of frequencies and directions than
Conclusions are made that the offloading system is a coupled
the Wind Sea, because Swell waves have dispersed from their
dynamic system in which the attached mooring and offloading lines,
generation area and have been dissipated. Beside this, in West
the FPSO influence the motions of the CALM buoy. In the paper, it
Africa there exists an Extreme Weather Condition called Squall. A
is also illustrates that there are two critical areas with respect to
squall is a sudden, sharp increase in wind speed, and it can cause
OOL fatigue life, i.e., at the CALM buoy hang-off point and in the
great loss to offshore systems. In this paper we did some research
mid-water buoyancy section.
on the response of FPSO and CALM offloading system under these
T.H.J. Bunnik and G. de Boer[5] did a series of model tests environment conditions in West Africa.
aimed at gaining insight in the tension variations in the export risers
NOMENCLATURE
and mooring lines of a CALM buoy. The results show that the
KG Vertical position coordinate above keel
wave-exciting surge and heave forces can be predicted well with
OD Diameter buoy body
linear diffraction theory, and to predict the tension variations in the

2 Copyright © 2014 by ASME

 EA Axial stiffness Table 1 Main particulars of FPSO
EI Bending stiffness Properties Values Unit
WT Wall thickness Length 304 m
DW Dry weight Breadth 62.8 m
CM Inertia coefficient Depth 34 m
CD Normal drag coefficient Draft 10.69 m
CT Tangential drag coefficient Weight 205150 T
I Density of internal fluid K.G. 22.7 m
Dir. Direction Ixx 1.62E+11 kg.m2
D.O.F Degree of freedom Iyy 1.26E+12 kg.m2
Max.V. Maximum Value Izz 1.26E+12 kg.m2
Min.V. Minimum Value
Mean.V. Mean. Value Table 2 Main particulars of CALM
S.D. Standard deviation Properties Values Unit
Deg. Degree O.D 19 m
Height 10.5 m
1 NUMERICAL MODEL DESCRIPTION
Skirt Diameter 23.5 m
Draft 6.5 m
K.G 5.65 m
Ixx 35405 kg.m2
Iyy 35405 kg.m2
Izz 36438 kg.m2

Figure 2 FPSO and offloading system Configuration

The two research objects are located in a water field of 1500 depth.
FPSO and CALM are moored by a 4X4 and 3X3 semi-taut mooring Figure 3 the Diffraction Model of FPSO and CALM
systems, respectively. The two floaters have a distance of 2000
The structures in the whole system can be divided into two
meters, and they are connected by two mid-water export lines,
categories: floating bodies (FPSO and CALM) and flexible
which configurate with a “lazy w” type. The specific layout of
structural members (mooring lines and OOL). For the floater, the
whole system is showed in figure 2. And the main particulars of
wave exciting loads, the added mass and the radiation damping are
FPSO and CALM buoy are shown in table 1 and table 2.

3 Copyright © 2014 by ASME

computed by a diffraction/radiation program (computing models in Table 3 Environmental condition in West Africa
Figure 3). Then hydrodynamic results are transferred to Orcaflex, a Period
fully coupled time-domain analysis software, to calculate the 100 year 10 year 1year
coupled response between floating bodies and flexible members. Main Hs(m) 3.6 3.1 2.6
Swell Tp(s) 17.5 16.8 15.9
For the flexible structural elements, a three-dimensional lumped
Second Hs(m) 1.55 1.35 1.15
mass model is adopted to simulate dynamic response of OOL and
Swell Tp(s) 14.7 14.3 13.8
mooring line, with motions of floaters being boundary conditions.
Wind Hs(m) 2.75 2.4 2.05
To consider the interaction between a floater and those flexible rods, Sea Tp(s) 7.2 7.0 6.7
the time domain equation of motions for the floaters is expressed Wind (10m)(m/s) 16 13.5 12.0
by: Current(m/s) 2.0 1.85 1.7
t
( M  Ma)  x   K (t   )  x( )  d  C  x 

2.1 Floater motion in extreme environmental conditions
The horizontal plane motions (maximum displacements) of
Fwave  Fdamping  Fmooring  FOOL
floating body in the extreme sea states are focused on in this section.
Where, x represents the motions of the floater; the matrix C is the The load cases to be analyzed include 100-year currents
stiffness due to hydrostatic restoring terms alone and M and Ma are dominating sea state, 100-year Wind Sea and 100-year sea state
the corresponding matrixes of physical mass and the added mass with swell. A JONSWAP spectrum is chosen to simulate Wind Sea,
matrix. The retardation functions K in above equation is based on Gaussian Swell spectrum for the Swell. Besides these, the system
the velocity kernel of the convolution term. On the right side, Fwave response characteristics under the impact of Squall are also
stands for the wave force acting on the floaters; Fdamping is the researched.
viscous damping coefficient; Fmooring and FOOL are the forces due to
mooring line and OOL of floaters, respectively.

2 Coupled Analysis of FPSO Offloading System

In this section, some studies have been done on responses of FPSO
Offloading System under the environment conditions of West
Africa. Table 3 and figure 4 present the mainly sea conditions in
West Africa.

Figure 5 FPSO maximum displacements in Surge and Sway

directions for different incident angles

Figure 4 Speed-time curve of Squall
The original data of Squall is taken from West African Egina
project, and the Squall data in time domain is given in figure 4.
The maximum Surge and Sway motions of FPSO varies with the
environmental load direction are plotted in Figure 5, Horizontal
coordinates stand for incident angles of environmental loads, and
vertical coordinates represent the surge and sway motions of the
floater. From the sway motion in three different sea states, the 100-
year loop currents, 100-year loop Wind Sea and 100-year loop
Swell, it can be seen that FPSO has the maximum displacements in
Wind Sea and current conditions. The results might be because that
FPSO has a big lateral area then it suffers large wind and current
forces. While the Swell shows little influence on the motions of

4 Copyright © 2014 by ASME

FPSO compared to wind sea and current. It also can observe that, in
the surge direction, FPSO always has a bigger motion when the
environmental loads in the 0- degree direction. This is mainly due
to the stretch effect of OOL, as the following analysis indicates.
Figure 6 CALM maximum displacements in Surge and Sway
directions for different incident angles
The figure 6 demonstrates the CALM’s maximum Surge and Sway
motions also depend on the environmental load directions. It easily
can be seen, current is the biggest influencing factor to plane
(a)Surge motion
(c)Roll motion
Figure 7 impact of Squall on FPSO motion
In this paper, some research of the response of whole system under
5 Copyright © 2014 by ASME
motion of CALM, whereas the sway motion has a bigger amplitude
with respect to surge motion, although they have almost the same
load area in these two directions. This is resulted from that the
CALM system has bigger system stiffness in its surge direction.
Compared to FPSO, CALM does not show great response in the
wind sea mainly because of its small wind area. Similarly, under the
effect of OOLs, CALM has a bigger motion in the 180-degree than
results of 0-degree sea state.
By comparing figure 5 and figure 6, it can be seen that maximum
displacements of FPSO and CALM both occur when the floater
experiences lateral environmental loads. For FPSO, it may be
resulted from that the floater has a bigger load area in the 90 degree
direction, which has been mentioned before; while for the CALM,
a symmetrical structure in all direction approximately, the reason is
that the transverse stiffness of the system is less than that in its
longitudinal direction. Therefore, the layout design for the system
in the specific field should consider these factors, and the system
could be arranged along the direction of the dominant environment.
(b) Sway motion
(d) Yaw motion
the condition of Squall is also performed. Squall is a popular
weather phenomenon in West Africa waters characterized by a
sudden, sharp increase in wind speed which is usually associated
with active weather. Due to its quick change of velocity magnitude,
the time-domain simulation using actual wind speed records is
preferred to evaluate the static and dynamic influences on floating
offshore structures. The original data of Squall is taken from West
African Egina project, and the Squall data in time domain is given
in figure 4.
time and the amplitude and direction also keep changing with time.
So the appearance of Squall may cause the floater abrupt change in
motion, which will lead to a saltation in the tensions of mooring
lines and OOLs. If the Squall is not taken into consideration during
the mooring system analysis, the mooring design may fail due to
Squall occurring. However, the CALM do not perform great
responses under the Squall for its little wind area, for brevity, the
results of its motion is not presented here.

The comparisons of FPSO displacements in the environments with
and without Squall are shown in Figure 7. It can be seen that Squall
is a very dangerous factor as for FPSO: the floater can perform
several times or even tens of times larger displacement than
corresponding displacement under ordinary sea conditions. Besides,
the Squall has a character that its speed increase sharply in a short
2.2 Motion spectral analysis
In this section, in order to research the relationship between waves
and motion characters of floaters in these waves, we did spectral
analysis for FPSO and CALM motion under 1-year loop sea state
and 10-year loop sea state which are shown in table 3. And all the
environment loads comes from 45 degree orientation.

(a) 1 year loop sea state

(b) 10 year loop sea state

Figure 8 Response spectrum of CALM motion under different sea states

By contrasting the wave energy spectrum and CALM motion
spectrum in Figure 8, it can be seen that the surge and heave motion
of CALM show great response in the frequency range of swell;
besides the effect of swell, the motion in sway direction mainly
controlled by low frequency environmental forces -- some parts of
motion energy concentrate in the low frequency that under the
frequency of swell. The roll motion is obviously affected by the
wind sea, and it does not show large response in the swell frequency.
Pitch motion shows a strong behavior in both swell and wind sea
frequency domain, while the Swell only generates more pitch

6 Copyright © 2014 by ASME

motion energy comparatively.

(a) 1 year loop sea state

(b) 10 year loop sea state

Figure 9 Response spectrum of FPSO motion under different sea states

Due to its large tonnage, FPSO horizontal movement mainly
depends on the mean environmental loads and low-frequency
environmental forces. Thus the motion spectrum of surge and sway
concentrate on the frequency range being lower than 0.03 rad/s.
The roll motion shows great response in the range of swell
frequency domain. And for the features of FPSO, there are little
response in pitch and yaw motions, but it still can be seen some
motion characters: the energy of pitch response is mainly located at
the swell frequency, while yaw is mainly influenced by low
frequency force and swell.
It is obviously can be seen that the Wind Sea and Swell have
different interaction on the floaters horizontal motions, In other
words, different motions are dominated by different wave
components.
2.3 OOL dynamic effect analysis
In order to study the OOL dynamic effect on the floater motions,
two numerical models are set up by this research. One is the fully
couple model consisting of FPSO and its mooring system, OOLs,
CALM and its mooring system; the other one is the de-couple
model in which the OOL is equivalent to static force act on the
floaters.
Then we carry out the time-domain analysis of two models in the
same environmental conditions and compare corresponding
responses of FPSO and CALM in the couple and de-couple model.
The mean values, standard deviation, maximum values and
minimum values of CALM motions are listed in table 4. With the
purpose of clearly illustrating the results, we take the results of
couple model as a standard, i.e. all the results of motions are set to
be 1. The motions of CALM and FPSO in de-coupled analysis are
changed into non-dimension form.
From comparison results, it is also found that the heave motion of
CALM is almost not changed, which implies that the OOL dynamic
effect did not work on it. In the de-couple model, CALM has
smaller yaw amplitude, which can be obviously seen in the yaw
motion of 45 degree. Besides these, the pitch and roll motion both
show great difference, which illustrate that the dynamic characters

7 Copyright © 2014 by ASME

of OOL has to be considered in evaluating two motions. surge and sway motions, and main cause is that the OOL
environment loads did not include in the de-couple model. Just like
The normalized motions of CALM in the de-couple model are
CALM, the heave motion of FPSO is not greatly affected by the
illustrated in table 4, which shows that the dynamic performance of
OOL.
OOL has significant influence on the motion of CALM.
Table 5 FPSO normalized motion statistics in de-couple model
Table 4 CALM normalized motion statistics in de-couple model
Dir. D.O.F Max. Min. Mean S.D.
Dir. D.O.F Max. Min. Mean S.D.
Surge 0.9864 0.9462 0.9698 1.0666
Surge 1.1071 1.5062 0.6680 1.1520
0 Deg. Heave 1.0002 0.9995 1.0000 1.0041
0 Deg. Heave 0.9844 0.9792 0.9998 0.9889
Pitch 1.0012 1.0003 0.9538 1.0006
Pitch 1.0500 0.9918 0.7781 1.0208
Surge 1.0081 0.9622 0.9766 1.0529
Surge 1.2375 1.1138 1.0544 1.1487
Sway 0.9288 0.8364 0.8962 1.1017
Sway 0.8576 0.5124 0.7253 1.0964
Heave 1.0011 0.9908 0.9997 1.0217
Heave 0.9935 1.0115 0.9992 0.9953 45 Deg.
45 Deg. Roll 1.2852 1.2869 0.8662 1.2076
Roll 0.8961 1.0069 0.1189 1.0113
Pitch 0.9866 0.9899 1.0029 0.9907
Pitch 1.0345 1.0417 0.8178 0.9771
Yaw 1.3188 0.1336 1.7979 1.1273
Yaw 0.8613 1.0130 0.9110 0.8791
Sway 0.9645 0.9421 0.9505 1.0684
Sway 0.8029 0.6333 0.7461 1.0385
90 Deg. Heave 1.0005 0.9977 0.9997 1.0050
90 Deg. Heave 0.9981 0.9982 0.9987 1.0072
Roll 1.0313 1.0366 0.9013 1.0334
Roll 0.9866 1.1431 0.4655 1.0357
In general, the OOL dynamic properties have much large influence
By the comparing results of sway motion, It can be seen in
on responses of CALM, while for FPSO, the impact of OOL
de-couple model, the maximum and minimum sway amplitudes of
dynamic characters are mostly reflected in the damping effect and
CALM both have a great decrease, compared with the couple
longitudinal stiffness. One of the conclusions above is that the
model results. This perhaps because the transverse load on OOLs
system longitudinal stiffness decrease without OOL, so some
are not taken into consideration by the de-couple calculation. Then
studies are done to investigate the OOL’s importance on system
in surge direction, there is a significant increase in the motion
longitudinal stiffness.
amplitude, which can be seen in the surge motion of 0 degree and
45 degree. And this may be caused by the decrease of longitudinal
stiffness in surge direction when there is no dynamic performance
of OOL.

From the normalized motion of FPSO in table 5, we can see that,

duo to its large tonnage, the motions of FPSO in the two models do
not show large difference. The main effect of OOL on FPSO is roll
motion: the extreme values of roll motion in the de-couple model
have an increase of 28% when the environment loads act in the
direction of 45 degree. This illustrate that the existence of OOL
Figure 10 force-displacement of OOL-CALM system in the
increases the damping of FPSO roll motion in the couple model.
longitudinal direction
We can also find that the yaw motion in the de-couple model has a
The force-displacement curves of OOL- FPSO and OOL- CALM
great increase due to the absence of OOL dynamic effect. The pitch
system are presented in figure 10 and figure 11, separately. We can
motion did not show much difference because of the large stiffness
get that for FPSO or CALM, the longitudinal force of rest parts of
of FPSO pitch motion. Furthermore, FPSO has some change in

8 Copyright © 2014 by ASME

system can be equivalent to the effect of a linear spring system. So
log N  11.764  3.0log S ( N  106 )
in the simplified model test or basic numerical modeling, the 
log N  15.606  5.0log S ( N  106 )
horizontal stiffness effect of OOL can be approximately model by
two linear springs.
In which, N is the allowable number of cycles to failure, and S is
the stress amplitude.

Table 6 Main particulars of OOL

Properties Value1 Value2 Unit
OD 508 1000 mm
WT 18.3 18.3+510 mm
DW 220.6 460.1 kg/m
EA 5.9E6 5.9E6 KN
EI 1.8E5 1.8E5 KNm2
--
Figure 11 force-displacement of OOL-FPSO system in the CM 2 2

longitudinal direction CD 1.2 1.969 --

CT 0.008 0.113 --
3 OOL FATIGUE ANALYSIS
ρI 850 850 kg/m3
The OOL fatigue damage has always been an important problem
and a lot of works have been done about it. In this section of the Note: Value 1 is the OOL without buoyancy material and Value 2
paper, the analysis of fatigue involved parameters under the stands for the OOL with buoyancy material. The buoyancy material
environment condition of West Africa is focused on. The main is hollow half-cylinder whose inside diameter is 508 mm, Outside
content including are the influence of different waves, different Diameter is 1000 mm and the density is 0.4 T/m3.
load directions on the fatigue damage of OOL, and the fatigue
damages caused from floater motion of different freedoms are also
studied

3.1 Method for OOL fatigue analysis

The S-N curve approach has been widely used to solve the fatigue
problem, and the main calculating steps of estimating fatigue
damage of OOL as follows:

(1)Carry out the time domain analyses for the system in the chosen
sea states, then get the OOL stress in each component in cross
section;

(2)Use the rain-flow counting method to get the number of cycles
in stress time series;
(3)Calculate the fatigue damage based on S-N curves as shown in
figure 12;
(4) Estimating the total fatigue damage as Palmgren-Miner’s rule
According to RP-C203（2005）of DNV[8], the S-N curve used in
the analysis is:
Figure 12 S-N curve（DNV）
The fatigue analysis starts with the response of the structure, which
is expressed as a stress time history. While the response time
history is irregular with time, rain-flow cycle counting is used to
decompose the irregular time history into equivalent stress of block
loading. The number of cycles in each block is usually recorded in a
stress range histogram. This can be used in Palmgren-Miner
calculation to obtain the fatigue life.

9 Copyright © 2014 by ASME

3.2 Results and analysis
The impacts of different wave directions and different kinds of
waves on OOL fatigue damage are analyzed in this section.
Figure 13 OOL fatigue damage in different wave directions
Figure 13 shows the results of fatigue analysis of OOL in different
wave directions. The X axis stands for the length of OOL,
coordinate with 0 m is the FPSO’s connection point and coordinate
of 2140 m is the CALM side, while the Y coordinate is the fatigue
damage of OOL. It can see that the OOL suffers the worst damage
when the environmental load direction is 0 degree, and from 0
degree to 90 degree, the fatigue damage of OOL gradually
decreases with the increase of environmental load angle.
Figure 14 OOL fatigue damage caused by different motions of
CALM
The main factors contributing to this phenomenon is that the surge
motion of CALM is the primary cause for OOL fatigue damage,
and this can be directly seen in the figure 14, which shows the OOL
fatigue damage caused by different CALM motions when the
incident angle of envrienmental load is 45 degree. In order to
eliminate the coupling affect, we investigated separately for each
degree of freedom to see its influence on fatigue performance of the
OOL. Besides theses, we can see from figure 13 and figure 14, the
OOL fatigue damage is main happened on the side which is close to
CALM, and the other side that near FPSO is sufferred less fatigue
10
damage.
Figure 15 OOL fatigue damage caused by different kinds of waves
The dynamic environmental conditions like Wind Sea and Swell
are considered to be principal loads that lead fatigue damage of
OOLs. With the purpose of researching the impact of different
kinds of waves on OOL fatigue damage, we did some analysis of
OOL fatigue in the sea states of Wind Sea, main swell and second
swell separately. It is observed in figure 15 that the main
environmental factor caused the fatigue damage of OOL is Wind
Sea and it mainly leads to the fatigue damage on the parts of OOL
that near CALM; while the Main Swell also has certain effect
which is mainly reflected in the damage of mid-curve section. The
Second Swell has little influence on OOL fatigue damage
compared to the other two waves.
Besides these, OOL fatigue damage mainly happens in the range of
the 600 meters near CALM, which indicates that CALM motion is
the key factor which results in OOL fatigue damage.
CONCLUSION
With the purpose of estimating the response of FPSO and CALM
offloading system in typical environment conditions of West Africa,
a series of research about the system are carried out and some
conclusions summarized as following:
Through the analysis of FPSO and offloading system plane motions
in different environment conditions, it is found that FPSO shows
bigger responses under the influence of Wind Sea dominate sea
state than other kind of sea states, especially when environment
loads comes from 90 degree orientation. Compared to other sea
states, the Current dominates sea state has the greatest effect on
CALM horizontal motions, and the biggest motions of CALM
also occurs when environment loads comes from 90 degree. This is
resulted from that the CALM system has smaller system stiffness in
Copyright © 2014 by ASME
sway direction. So in offloading system analysis, different kinds of
floating bodies have to choose different types of waves as the
extreme environmental condition.
The Squall in West Africa arises suddenly and the amplitude and
direction of wind are mutable, so the floater likes FPSO which has
a large wind area endures a great loads from it. According to the big
displacement of FPSO and the sharply increase of tension force of
mooring line, it should take Squall into consideration in the system
strength analysis.
Through spectral analysis for FPSO and CALM motions under
1-year loop sea state and 10-year loop sea state, we find that the
roll motion of FPSO shows great response in the range of swell
frequency domain and the energy of pitch response is mainly
located at the swell frequency, while yaw is mainly influenced by
low frequency force and swell. As for CALM, its roll motion is
obviously affected by the Wind Sea, and it does not show large
response in the Swell frequency. Pitch motion of CALM shows a
strong behavior in both Swell and Wind Sea frequency domain,
while the Swell only generates more pitch motion energy
comparatively.
With the comparison of couple and de-couple model analysis
results, it is found that the OOL effects on floaters mainly displays
in three aspects: The first one is the existence of OOL increase
longitudinal stiffness of the system; the second one is OOL lateral
loads have an impact on floater motion, especially for CALM; The
third one is OOL will increase the damping effect of the floater
motion such as the FPSO roll motion.
The analysis about OOL fatigue damage demonstrate that the
CALM has much large effect on the OOL fatigue failure than FPSO,
and the surge motion of CALM is the principal factor. In West
Africa, compared with other kinds of environment conditions,
Wind Sea is the most effective environmental factors which may
lead to fatigue damage of OOL.
Although some conclusions on hydrodynamic performance of
FPSO and CALM buoy system based on typical sea states in West
Africa have been drawn, a further research such as how the
configuration of OOL affects its fatigue life are still needed.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The work reported in this project was carried out during the
11
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sub-project of National Major Scientific and Technological Special
Project “Numerical Simulation and Experimental Investigation of
FPSO and Offloading System (2011ZX05030-006-002)” and
supported by China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC)
Research Center. This paper is funded by the International
Exchange Program of Harbin Engineering University for
Innovation-oriented Talents Cultivation.
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