Dynamic Motion and Tension of Marine Cables Being Laid During Velocity Change of Mother Vessels

Flexible segment model （FSM） is adopted for the dynamics calculation of marine cable being laid. In FSM, the cable is divided into a number of flexible segments, and nonlinear governing equations are listed according to the moment equilibriums of the segments. Linearization iteration scheme is employed to obtain the numerical solution for the governing equations. For the cable being laid, the payout rate is calculated from the velocities of all segments. The numerical results are shown of the dynamic motion and tension of marine cables being laid during velocity change of the mother vessels.

Experimental Study on the Influence of Cross-Section Type of Marine Cable Conductors on the Bending Performance

Through the development of marine energy,marine cables are the key equipment for transmission of electrical energy between surface platforms and underwater facilities.Fatigue failure is a critical failure mode of marine cables.The bending performance of the cable conductor has a major influence on both bending and fatigue performances of the overall cable structure.To study the influence of different types of the conductor cross-section on the bending performances of marine cable conductors,three types of copper conductors with the same cross-sectional area,i.e.,noncompressed round,compressed round,and shaped wire conductors,were selected.The experimental results demonstrated that the cross-section type significantly affects the bending performances of copper conductors.In particular,the bending stiffness of the shaped wire conductor is the highest among the three conductor types.Four key evaluation parameters,i.e.,the bending stiffness,maximum bending moment,envelope area,and engineering critical slip point,were selected to compare and analyze the bending hysteresis curves of the three copper conductors.The differences in the key evaluation parameters were analyzed based on the structural dimensional parameters,processing methods,and classical bending stiffness theoretical models of the three copper conductor types.The results provide an important theoretical guidance for the structural design and engineering applications of marine cable conductors.

Steady-State Configuration and Tension Calculations of Marine Cables Under Complex Currents via Separated Particle Swarm Optimization?

Under complex currents, the motion governing equations of marine cables are complex and nonlinear, and the calculations of cable configuration and tension become difficult compared with those under the uniform or simple currents. To obtain the numerical results, the usual Newton-Raphson iteration is often adopted, but its stability depends on the initial guessed solution to the governing equations. To improve the stability of numerical calculation, this paper proposed separated the particle swarm optimization, in which the variables are separated into several groups, and the dimension of search space is reduced to facilitate the particle swarm optimization. Via the separated particle swarm optimization, these governing nonlinear equations can be solved successfully with any initial solution, and the process of numerical calculation is very stable. For the calculations of cable configuration and tension of marine cables under complex currents, the proposed separated swarm particle optimization is more effective than the other particle swarm optimizations.

Numerical Investigation of the Dynamics for Low Tension Marine Cables

This paper presents a numerical investigation into the dynamics of marine cables which are extensively used in offshore industry. In this numerical study, the Euler-Bernoulli beam model is adopted to develop the governing equations of the cable. Bending stiffness is considered to cope with the low tension problem in local area of towing cable, and thus a more accurate solution with the consideration of the axial elongation can be given.The derived strongly-coupled and nonlinear governing equations are solved by a second-order accurate, implicit,and large time step stable central finite difference method. The quadratically convergent Newton-Raphson iteration method is applied to solving the discrete nonlinear algebraic equations. Then a towed array sonar system(TASS)problem is studied. The numerical solutions agree reasonably well with the experimental data and the simulated results of the references. The specified program of the present paper shows great robustness with high efficiency.

Facial Features of an Air Gun Array Wavelet in the Time-Frequency Domain Based on Marine Vertical Cables

Air gun arrays are often used in marine energy exploration and marine geological surveys.The study of the single bubble dynamics and multibubbles produced by air guns interacting with each other is helpful in understanding pressure signals.We used the van der Waals air gun model to simulate the wavelets of a sleeve gun of various offsets and arrival angles.Several factors were taken into account,such as heat transfer,the thermodynamically open quasi-static system,the vertical rise of the bubble,and air gun post throttling.Marine vertical cables are located on the seafloor,but hydrophones are located in seawater and are far away from the air gun array vertically.This situation conforms to the acquisition conditions of the air gun far-field wavelet and thus avoids the problems of ship noise,ocean surges,and coupling.High-quality 3D wavelet data of air gun arrays were collected during a vertical cable test in the South China Sea in 2017.We proposed an evaluation method of multidimensional facial features,including zeropeak amplitude,peak-peak amplitude,bubble period,primary-to-bubble ratio,frequency spectrum,instantaneous amplitude,instantaneous phase,and instantaneous frequency,to characterize the 3D air gun wave field.The match between the facial features in the field and simulated data provides confidence for the use of the van der Waals air gun model to predict air gun wavelet and facial features to evaluate air gun array.