A NOVEL HYBRID METHOD OF PRE-TENSION ADJUSTMENT OF MOORING LINES IN THE MODEL TEST

摘要

Mooring lines are the most commonly used station-keeping systems for floating platforms, and the pre-tension of the mooring lines has significant effect on the dynamics of floater/mooring system. However, during the model test, which is the most important method for the research on the floater/mooring system, the pre-tension of the designed mooring lines in the basin are always significantly different with the target values of the ideal model due to the error of the manufacture of the mooring lines and positon locating of the anchor point and so on. As a result, the adjustment of the pretension of the mooring lines based on the ideal model is an important task during the model test. The pre-tension is always adjusted by increasing or decreasing mooring line length. While all the mooring lines are connected with the floater and coupled with each other, pre-tension adjustment is an unwarranted and cyclic process which often wastes a lot of time. This paper presents a novel methodology for regulating the mooring line pre-tension based on matrix calculation. The increment matrix of the mooring line tension can be obtained by increasing or decreasing the length of each mooring line in the numerical model. Assuming that the increment the mooring line tension is linear to the change of the mooring line length, the adjustment amount of each mooring line length can be calculated from the difference of the real pre-tension and the target pre-tension. However, the mooring line tension is always nonlinear to the mooring line length. Calculating the increment matrix of the mooring line tension and adjustment of the mooring line length is also a cyclic process until the error of real pre-tension of the model in the basin and target value can meet the accuracy requirement. This method is used in a model of a mooring system with 12 mooring lines which are connected with a semi-submersible platform. The test results show that the pre-tension of mooring lines can be adjusted to the target value quickly based on the method proposed in this paper.