Experimental, Numerical and Simplified Theoretical Model Study for Internal Solitary Wave Load on FPSO with Emphasis on Scale Effect

摘要

Scale effect of ISWs loads on Floating Production Storage and Offloading(FPSO) is studied in this paper. The application conditions of KdV, eKdV and MCC ISWs theories are used in the numerical method. The depthaveraged velocities induced by ISWs are used for the velocity-inlet boundary. Three scale ratio numerical models λ=1, 20 and 300 were selected, which the scale ratio is the size ratio of numerical models to the experimental model.The comparisons between the numerical and former experimental results are performed to verify the feasibility of numerical method. The comparisons between the numerical and simplified theoretical results are performed to discuss the applicability of the simplified theoretical model summarized from the load experiments. Firstly, the numerical results of λ=1 numerical model showed a good agreement with former experimental and simplified theoretical results. It is feasible to simulate the ISWs loads on FPSO by the numerical method. Secondly, the comparisons between the results of three scale ratio numerical models and experimental results indicated that the scale ratios have more significant influence on the experimental horizontal forces than the vertical forces. The scale effect of horizontal forces mainly results from the different viscosity effects associated with the model’s dimension.Finally, through the comparisons between the numerical and simplified theoretical results for three scale ratio models, the simplified theoretical model of the pressure difference and friction forces exerted by ISWs on FPSO is applied for large-scale or full-scale FPSO.