A Mooring System Deployment Design Methodology for Vessels at Varying Water Depths

In this paper,a methodology for designing mooring system deployment for vessels at varying water depths is proposed.The Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II(NSGA-II)is combined with a self-dependently developed vessel-mooring coupled program to find the optimal mooring system deployment considering both station-keeping requirements and the safety of the mooring system.Two case studies are presented to demonstrate the methodology by designing the mooring system deployments for a very large floating structure(VLFS)module and a semi-submersible platform respectively at three different water depths.It can be concluded from the obtained results that the mooring system can achieve a better station-keeping ability with relatively shorter mooring line when deployed in the shallow water.The safety factor of mooring line is mainly dominated by the maximum instantaneous tension increment in the shallow water,while the pre-tension has a decisive influence on the safety factor of the mooring line in the deep water.

The study on the bottom friction and the breaking coefficient for typhoon waves in radial sand ridges—the Lanshayang Channel as an example

Owing to the interactions among the complex terrain, bottom materials, and the complicate hydrodynam-ics, typhoon waves show special characteristics as big waves appeared at the high water level （HWL） and small waves emerged at low and middle water levels （LWL and MWL） in radial sand ridges （RSR）. It is as-sumed that the mud damping, sandy bed friction and wave breaking effects have a great influence on the typhoon wave propagation in this area. Under the low wave energy, a mud layer will form and transport into the shallow area, thus the mud damping effects dominate at the LWL and the MWL. And high Collins coef-ficient （c around 1） can be applied to computing the damping effects at the LWL and the MWL. But under the high wave energy, the bottom sediment will be stirred and suspended, and then the damping effects disappear at the HWL. Thus the varying Collins coefficient with the water level method （VCWL） is imple-mented into the SWAN to model the typhoon wave process in the Lanshayang Channel （LSYC） of the RSR, the observed wave data under “Winnie” （“9711”） typhoon was used as validation. The results show that the typhoon wave in the RSR area is able to be simulated by the VCWL method concisely, and a constant wave breaking coefficient （γ） equaling 0.78 is better for the RSR where wide tidal flats and gentle bed slopes exist.