Prediction of dynamic responses of FSRU-LNGC side-by-side mooring system

Journal article, 2020

Floating Storage and Regasification Unit (FSRU) becomes one of the most popular equipment in the industry for providing clean energy because of its technical, economic and environmental features. The interaction between the FSRU and Liquified Natural Gas Carrier (LNGC) under the combined loads from wind, wave and current is quite complex to model. In this paper, a configuration for the offloading operation of the FSRU-LNGC side-by-side mooring system is proposed to predict the motion responses, forces on the cables and fenders of the multi-floating mooring system. The damping lid method is adopted to improve the overestimated hydrodynamic coefficients calculated from conventional potential flow theory in the frequency domain. The dynamic response of the side-by-side mooring system including six degrees of freedom motion, relative motions, cable tensions and fender forces are provided and analyzed. The numerical results are validated using the experimental data. The proposed coupled analysis model and the numerical analysis can properly predict the dynamic response of the multi-floating mooring. The sensitivity analysis of pretension of the connecting cables on the dynamic responses of the two vessels are provided. Moreover, the non-dimensional damping parameters can be acted as a good reference to the dynamic response analysis of similar multi-floating mooring systems.