Abstract

Unlike other ocean structures, the Very Large Floating Structures(VLFS) would have large deformation under waves because of the enormous size. Hydroelasticity theory has been developed to study the response of VLFS. To increase the computational efficiency, a multi-segment beam model is proposed here to study a VLFS, which is a multi-module connected by hinge connectors. The response characteristics were studied in this paper, including the effects of wave length, wave frequency and connector's stiffness. It can be concluded from the results that, under long waves, rigid body motion is dominant, but elastic deformation dominates under short waves. The hudroelastic response is sensitive to the wave heading but biggest elastic deformation always happened when the projection of the length of the VLFS on wave heading direction is close to the wave length. Elastic deformation is sensitive to the stiffness of the connectors.

Keywords:
floating production system, hydroelastic response, heave motion, connector, rigid body motion, stiffness, wave length, wave incoming direction, elastic deformation, fpso
Subjects:
Offshore Facilities and Subsea Systems, Floating production systems
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2015. International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers
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