Investigation on Touching Sea Bottom by a FPSO in Bohai Oilfield with Shallow Water

摘要

As one of the key safety problems, the motion performance and touching sea bottom of a FPSO are paid much attention by the ocean oil companies when the FPSO is exposed to survival storms in the shallow-water working areas. In this paper, time-domain numerical simulations are carried out on a 160kDWT FPSO with a Yoke mooring system moored in the BZ25-1 oilfield with a water depth of 16.7m. The results are compared with those of the corresponding model tests. Good agreement shows that the time-domain simulations can be used to predict the performance of the FPSO in shallow-water reasonably. It is found that the touch of seabed by a fully loaded FPSO occurred few times under survival storm conditions. Therefore, the FPSO should be less loaded than that in the fully loaded condition under the survival storms.