EXPERIENCES AT HSVA WITH MODEL TESTING OF MOORED STRUCTURES IN ICE-COVERED WATERS

摘要

The increase of activities in oil and gas exploration and production in cold regions during the last years is associated with the development of new innovative concepts with respect to arctic fixed and moored offshore installations. As a consequence there is a huge demand from the oil industry to validate the proposed concepts and feasibility studies. Apart from that, numerical simulations may be beneficial to a certain extent to investigate the ice related problems, one can still not dispense with the execution of physical model tests. Worldwide there are only a limited number of facilities available, which are able to cope with the challenge of ice model tests at a proper model scale. The paper describes broadly the assets and drawbacks of different types of mooring systems ("wet" or "dry" mooring system) and the choice of suitable substituted mechanical systems with respect to their application for various ice scenarios. Alternatives how to design the model test set-up in order to measure the ice forces independently from the system response forces of moored floating structures will also be discussed.