Metocean Survey of Deepwater Areas in the South China Sea for a Semi Submersible Drilling Platform

This paper introduces a process on the metocean survey of a deepwater area in the South China Sea, which is as a basic data for the design and construction of a semi submersible of drilling. The marine environment of the South China Sea is extremely harsh and the semi submersible of drilling will be operated in a very poor condition. So it is necessary to get more metocean data as basic parameters before design a semi-submersible drilling rig. To acquire such data, the engineers carried out a set of surveys and got a lot of in situ metocean data, including not only the weather environment data but also marine environment data, such as the height and frequency of the waves, the current velocity in the difference depth of the sea, and the variational laws of a metocean data with seasons in a year and so on. In addition, engineers also processed theses actual data by related mathematics method and got a set of parameters as basic environmental data to design a new semi submersible of drilling. During surveys in the sea, the engineers found a phenomenon of the soliton that occurred in the South China Sea uniquely. Moreover, this paper involves other special phenomenon in the sea, for example, VIV (Vortex Induced Vibration) when surveys were operating in the South China Sea.