This paper was removed at the author’s request on October 22, 2021. Copyright © 2021 by ASME

Tubular joints are common in offshore framed structures such as jackets. These joints are subjected to fatigue due to cyclic loads from waves. Stress concentration factor plays a major role in the estimation of fatigue life. Studies have been carried out in the past on stress concentration factors for these joints. However, literature on ring stiffened joints is limited. In the present study, numerical simulations have been carried out on ring stiffened tubular joints, especially the T joints, subjected to axial tension load using finite element method in linear analysis using ABAQUS software. A solid type 20-node quadratic brick element (C3D20R) has been used in the study. Stresses in hotspot locations at brace/chord intersection, ring/chord intersection and ring inner edge are examined. The numerical model has been validated using published experimental data and Lloyd’s register recommendations. Further parametric study has been carried out with 20 models, which includes geometric parameters of ring stiffener such as width of stiffener, thickness of stiffener and spacing between the ring stiffeners. The results of parametric study show a significant reduction of SCF at saddle location by placing ring stiffeners in unstiffened T joint. A set of new parametric equations are developed to calculate SCF for ring stiffened T joint at saddle location for axial tensile load.

New types of fish farms are often larger and structurally more complex than conventional fish farming structures, and associated challenges concerning safety and costs increase correspondingly. Thus, increased precision in structural design is required, with estimation of hydrodynamic loads on nets as an important topic. Today, both load coefficients for nets and measured netting dimensions are given with relatively high uncertainties. New knowledge for netting materials with high solidities as well as scaled netting commonly applied in model tests are included in the presented study. Results from towing tests and the development of a new mathematical expression for local drag coefficients (for netting twines) indicate that drag coefficients are not only dependent on solidity and Reynolds number, but may also be affected by the velocity reduction and the local velocity at the twines.

Sea state conditions can be estimated from the motion of a moving ship by converting its response to incident waves through the response amplitude operator. The method is applied herein to ship motion data from the icebreaker R/V Akademik Tryoshnikov and recorded during the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition across the Southern Ocean during the Austral summer 2016–17. The response amplitude operator of the vessel was estimated using two boundary element method models, namely NEMOH and HydroSTAR. An inter-comparison of model performance is discussed. The accuracy of the reconstructed sea states is assessed against concurrent measurements of the wave energy spectrum, which were acquired during the expedition with the marine radar WaMoS-II. Results show good agreement between reconstructed sea states (wave spectrum as well as integrated parameters) and direct observations. Model performances are consistent. Nevertheless, NEMOH produces slightly more accurate wave parameters when quantitatively compared against HydroSTAR.

The applications of a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH)-based, a Finite Volume Method (FVM)-based and a Boundary Element Method (BEM)-based tools to investigate the nonlinear interactions between large waves and a submerged horizontal circular structure and to some extent a rectangular cylinder at various submergence depths in deep water conditions are presented. The main aim is to validate the Lagrangian technique based SPH tool to predict the wave-structure interaction forces under large waves. The features of typical force curves in a wave cycle, the magnitude of wave forces, and the influence of relative axis depth of the structure in deep water conditions are investigated, primarily using an open-sourced SPH tool. Simulations were carried out in 2D with one deepwater wave at multiple submergence depths. The water surface elevations are predicted at different near- and far-field locations. The time-averaged mean and the average amplitude of the horizontal and vertical forces acting on the cylindrical model at various submergence depths are plotted and then physically interpreted. The wave forces and surface elevations are compared with the available published experimental studies and CFD (both FVM and BEM) predictions. Good agreement between the SPH predictions and the measurements was obtained for the submerged body’s surface elevation and hydrodynamic forces at all submergence depths. The FVM tends to overestimate the wave forces compared to the SPH predictions and the measurements, particularly for the shallowly submerged structure when extreme wave breaking occurs. The BEM predictions are reasonable for the non-wave breaking cases.

The methodology described in this paper is used to reduce a large set of combined wind, waves, and currents to a smaller set that still represents well enough the desired site for ship maneuvering simulations. This is achieved by running fast-time simulations for the entire set of environmental conditions and recording the vessel’s drifting time-series while it is controlled by an automatic-pilot based on a line-of-sight algorithm. The cases are then grouped considering how similar the vessel’s drifting time-series are, and one environmental condition is selected to represent each group found by the cluster analysis. The measurement of dissimilarity between the time-series is made by application of Dynamic Time Warping and the Cluster Analysis is made by the combination of Partitioning Around Medoids algorithm and the Silhouette Method. Validation is made by maneuvering simulations made with a Second Deck Officer.

Three-dimensional effects on slamming loads predictions of a ship section are investigated numerically using the unsteady incompressible Reynolds-Average Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations and volume of fluid (VOF) method, which are implemented in interDyMFoam solver in open-source library OpenFoam. A convergence and uncertainty study is performed considering different resolutions and constant Courant number (CFL) following the ITTC guidelines. The numerical solutions are validated through comparisons of slamming loads and motions between the CFD simulations and the available experimental values. The total slamming force and slamming pressures on a 2D ship section and the 3D model are compared and discussed. Three-dimensional effects on the sectional force and the pressures are quantified both in transverse and longitudinal directions of the body considering various entry velocities. The non-dimensional pressure coefficient distribution on the 3D model is presented.

This paper presents the results of wind load computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculations performed on the topside structures of a self-propelled wind turbine installation jack-up. The CFD calculations were performed for the jack-up topside structures with and without the deck load. An atmospheric boundary layer profile was applied for the model-scale calculations. The full range of heading angles was considered. The CFD results were validated through comparison with the wind tunnel tests which were carried out at the German-Dutch wind tunnels (DNW) in Marknesse, The Netherlands. Moreover, a comparison is presented between the applied boundary layer profiles throughout the CFD computational domain with those profiles measured in the wind tunnel. The CFD results were found to be in good agreement with the wind tunnel tests for the considered cases, verifying the feasibility of the CFD method as an important design tool for the prediction of wind loads during the design processes of these types of jack-ups.

Extreme waves at the sea surface can have severe impacts on marine structures. One of the theoretical mechanisms leading to extreme waves is the instability of deep-water wave trains subject to initially small perturbations, which then grow exponentially. The present study focuses on the two-dimensional Benjamin–Feir (or modulational) instability and the three-dimensional crescent (or horseshoe) waves, also known as Class I and Class II instabilities, respectively. Numerical studies on Class I and Class II wave instabilities to date have been limited to models founded on potential flow theory, thus they could only properly investigate the process from initial growth of the perturbations to the initial breaking point. The present study conducts numerical simulations to investigate the generation and development of wave instabilities involving the wave breaking process. A CFD model solving Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations coupled with turbulence closure in terms of the anisotropic Reynolds stress model is applied. Wave form evolutions, Fourier amplitudes, and the turbulence beneath the broken waves are investigated.

A wave field in a wave basin inevitably has spatial variation due to the wave’s cylindrical propagation property. Therefore, we aimed to develop an optimization method for the control of wave-makers to produce a spatially uniform wave field in a specified test zone inside a wave basin with an arbitrary arrangement of wave-makers. The optimization is based on the simulated annealing algorithm, a method for finding a globally optimal solution, which was combined with a numerical wave basin based on linear wave-maker theory. A wave generation experiment was performed in the actual sea model basin (80 m long, 40 m wide, and 4.5 m deep) at the National Maritime Research Institute to validate the proposed optimization method. A case study was conducted with a long-crested regular-wave with a wave height of 10 cm, wavelength of 4.0 m, and wave direction of 180 degrees, which corresponds to the longitudinal direction of the wave basin. A 40-m × 14-m test zone was set in the middle of the wave basin. The experimental results with and without the proposed optimization were compared, which confirmed that the spatial uniformity of the wave field was improved, and the coefficient of variation for the wave height in the test zone decreased from 0.127 to 0.029.

In ship manoeuvrability, the crabbing test is critical to evaluate the hydrodynamic quantities for the guidance of an efficient and safe berthing or unberthing manoeuvres. In the present study, the crabbing performance of a cruise ship is investigated by an unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) method considering the instantaneous relative motion between the ship and the quay. In the numerical simulations, the cruise ship is approaching the quay wall at a constant lateral speed. The crabbing motion with five degrees of freedom is modeled by the dynamic overset mesh technique, while the free surface elevation is simulated by the Volume of Fluid method. For reliable predictions of the crabbing performances, the timestep dependency study is conducted and a suitable time step is determined. From the computations, the hydrodynamic performances of the cruise ship, including forces and moments, as well as the surge, sinkage, roll, trim and yaw motions are predicted. The numerical results indicate variations of the hydrodynamic quantities under the impacts of ship speed and blockage effects by the quay wall. The present results can be used to evaluate the crabbing ability of the cruise ship and to provide guidance for estimating and designing the crabbing model test in further investigations.

The excessive acceleration is one of five stability failure modes for intact stability being discussed at IMO. The excessive acceleration usually occurs in shallow draft state, under which the ship is prone to large nonlinear rolling motion. Therefore, the accurate prediction and evaluation of the acceleration response are required in ship intact stability analysis. This paper proposes a 5-DOF model in time domain to calculate the nonlinear acceleration response of a large container ship. The nonlinear restoring force and wave exciting forces (F-K force) are calculated through pressure integration on instantaneous wetted surfaces. A model test has been carried out to verify the prediction method of ship nonlinear acceleration response in the regular and irregular waves. It turns out the ship nonlinear acceleration response in regular and irregular waves obtained by the nonlinear time domain simulation agrees well with the experimental results. The vulnerability criteria for excessive acceleration are also validated by numerical and experimental results. In addition, the influence factor of ship lateral acceleration is studied. The results show that the prediction accuracy of 5-DOF model is acceptable. However, the accuracy needs to be improved for the condition of short wavelength. The influence of angular velocity can be ignored.

The present research focuses on the experimental and numerical analysis of nonlinear gap resonance which can occur for two side-by-side configured vessels during the offloading operation of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). The proximity of the FLNG (Floating Liquefied Natural Gas) facility and LNGC (Liquified Natural Gas Carrier) brings about the formation of a long narrow gap region between the two vessels. The model test was carried out in a wave flume with vessels of different sizes to obtain the resonance response at different locations in the gap region with the effects of gap distances and vessel drafts in incident waves of different wave frequencies and wave directions analysed. It was found that certain model configurations produce increased wave amplification between the vessels, these were highlighted and presented and have the possibility of being predicted to prevent the occurrence. The numerical analysis was carried out with the potential flow solver SIMA in the time domain and a calibrated damping factor was assigned to suppress the overestimated wave elevation in the narrow gap region.

This paper focuses on the use of safety barrier analysis, during the design phase of a vessel powered by cryogenic hydrogen, to identify possible weaknesses in the architecture. Barrier analysis can be used to evaluate a series of scenarios that have been identified in the industry as critical. The performance evaluation of such barriers in a specific scenario can lead to either the approval of the design, if a safety threshold is met, or the inclusion of additional barriers to mitigate risk even further. By conducting a structured analysis, it is possible to identify key barriers that need to be included in the system, intended both as physical barriers (sensors, cold box) and as administrative barriers (checklist, operator training). The method chosen for this study is the Barrier and Operational Risk Analysis (BORA) method. This method, developed for the analysis of hydrocarbon releases, is described in the paper and adapted for the analysis of cryogenic hydrogen releases. A case study is presented using the BORA method, developing the qualitative barrier analysis. The qualitative section of the method can be easily adapted to vessels of different class and size adopting the same storage solution. The barrier analysis provides a general framework to analyze the system and check that the safety requirements defined by the ship operator and maritime certification societies are met.

A double-module semi-submersible platform for scientific experiment has been applied firstly in practical engineering. Hinge-type connectors are used to link the two modules reliably and release the relative pitch freedom, and the strength of connector structures determines directly the integrity and safety of the platform. In this paper, the three-dimensional finite element model of the platform structure is developed including the local features of connectors, and main elastic modes are obtained. By using the Potential flow theory and the Green Function method, the hydrodynamic coefficients of the model are determined. Based on the three-dimensional hydroelastic theory, the response amplitude operators (RAOs) of generalized coordinates associated with different order modes are investigated. That indicates the structural deformation of connectors is excited mainly by modes of horizontal bending moment and torsion, and the stress responses in the longitudinal bulkheads close to bearings are generally marked. Using the modal superposition method, the RAOs of stress in the typical joints of connector structures are calculated under the given wave directions. Considering the JONSWAP spectrum and the amplitudes of stress responses of connector structures following Rayleigh distribution in short term, the strength of the connector structure is predicted in short term. In order to verify the correctness of the strength prediction method presented in this paper, more than thirty stress sensors are installed on the typical joints of connector structures of the double-module semi-submersible platform located in the real sea. Those stress responses are monitored during the typical typhoon activity, and the statistical data is compared with the predicted results from the theoretical model. Both the distribution trend and magnitudes of the results from the two methods are principally consistent that validates the given model. This theoretical method may provide an effective tool to analyze the strength of connector structures of multiple-module offshore platform.

In recent years, extreme waves have attracted more and more attention due to its threat to offshore and coastal structures. It is essential to obtain further insight into the formation and propagation of the extreme waves. The formation of extreme waves mainly comes from the simultaneous focusing of wave group energy in the ocean. In the present study, the nonlinear characteristics of the extreme wave are experimentally investigated by the wave focusing method. The phase decomposition methods, both two-phases separation and four-phases separation methods, are used to obtain the higher harmonic elevation in the focused wave. The results show that the four-phases separation method can reasonably extract the first four harmonics. With the separated results, the nonlinear analysis of the wave elevation and velocity of the focused wave is carried out. It is found that the harmonics of the wave group focused at the same time, but the wave elevation and energy of higher-order harmonics are smaller than that of the overall wave. The Stokes wave theory can describe the variation of second-order harmonics satisfactorily. However, the Stokes wave theory cannot estimate third-order harmonics accurately. More work should be carried out to figure out the third-order wave interaction occurring during wave focusing. With a distributed wave gauge system, the wave evolution along the wave flume is measured. The evanescent modes significantly influence the wave group’s harmonic structure near the wavemaker. The coefficients of the higher-order harmonics are obtained from the measured elevations. The nonlinear wave elevation of the focused wave can be reconstructed with those coefficients basing on the linear theoretical solution, which is in good agreement with the experimental results.

In this paper, three methods are used in order to obtain the solution for the propagation of water solitons over finite and variable depth. First, the exact analytical solitary wave solutions of the one-dimensional non-linear Boussinesq equations under shallow water condition are described for constant and variable depth. Second, the three-dimensional Fully Non-linear Potential Flow code OceanWave3D is used in order to obtain the numerical solutions for the solitary waves’ propagation over same depth ranges, providing robust solutions for the potential flow problem. Third, Computational Fluid Dynamics’ tool OpenFOAM is used in order to obtain the viscous solution for the same problem, however, without the accounts of turbulence models. The free-surface profiles are drawn and compared; and the stability of the numerical solutions are assessed. Since the approximations of Boussinesq-type equations depend mainly on the orders of magnitude of amplitude and depth, the numerical-analytical comparison will draw the limits for the validity of the analytical solutions. On the other hand, the comparison will provide the limits where viscous effects start playing an important role, whereas the CFD simulations predict the occurrence of wave breaking. These benchmark cases are compared with past references. After all, results regarding the same phenomena have been described in the literature according to, e.g. Fully Non-linear Boussinesq Models, and Fully Nonlinear Potential Flow schemes solved by Boundary Element Methods. Last but not least, the open source Fully Non-linear Potential Flow code is used in order to provide the potential flow solution for some extra cases of water soliton propagation, in order to capture the trends in weak shoaling scenarios.

This paper presents the development and testing of Gator, a hydraulic Power Take Off (PTO) being commercialised for the Aquaculture market. Gator uses a novel polymer bellows to pump pressurised water through a power take off system, while also providing a non-linear force response that reduces mooring line loads over traditional mooring lines. The Gator system is comprised of 4 distinct subsystems: The Gator pump, hydraulics, turbine, and electrical storage & control. The Gator pump is a polymer component that compresses under load, pumping water through check valves into the hydraulic system. The connected hydraulic system takes the pressurised water, regulates the pressure and flow rates with an accumulator, and provides a steady flow of water to the turbine, generating electricity. This paper will provide an overview of the technical development of the Gator system over several phases, which has focussed its adaptation for use in the aquaculture industry as an inline pump on cage mooring lines. A description of comprehensive testing undertaken on a linear test rig to simulate the variable loading that the system would experience in operation will be provided as well as some of the early characterisation results from this testing.

In this paper, the CFD framework REEF3D is utilized to investigate the hydrodynamics of a large offshore fish farm in waves. The solver consists of a rigid body dynamics solver for the frame structure coupled to a fluid solver including the shielding effects of the nets. The solver and the grid independence are validated using a 2D numerical wave tank, a free decay test, and a study of the wave loads on a rigid net panel. Then, the effects of regular wave parameters, the thickness of the vertical outer columns of the structure, and varies aspect ratios on the loads, response and maximum mooring tensions are investigated. It is concluded that the response is sensitive to the wave period rather than the wave height and that the net system accounts for about 30% of the total drag but does not influence the structural response to a larger extend. The effect of the aspect ratio on the hydrodynamics is more distinct than that of the frame thickness especially. Thus, the first step towards a systemic evaluation of the importance of different structural parts of an offshore fish cage for the expected responses is presented in this paper.

Cavitation is an undesirable phenomenon in the maritime industry as it causes damage to the propeller, degrading hydrodynamic performance and increasing the subsequent underwater radiated noise (URN). Therefore, mitigating cavitation on marine propellers is an important area of research in order to reduce carbon emissions emitted from the shipping industry and reduce the rate at which ocean ambient noise levels are increasing. The Humpback whale has provided inspiration to research in the fluid-structure interaction field due to the presence of leading-edge (LE) tubercles on the pectoral fins that allow it to perform acrobatic maneuvers to catch prey. This paper assesses the cavitation containment capability of the LE tubercles on a benchmark marine propeller in both heavy and light cavitating conditions using commercial code STAR-CCM+, unsteady incompressible Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) solver and the Schnerr-Sauer cavitation model to quantify the sheet cavitation present over a range of operating conditions. In summary, in heavy-cavitating conditions, a reduction in sheet cavitation with the inclusion of LE tubercles was observed to a maximum value of 2.75% in all operating conditions considered. A maximum improvement of 3.51% and 1.07% was predicted in propulsive thrust and hydrodynamic efficiency, respectively. In light cavitating conditions, although in some conditions a reduction in cavity volume was observed, this did not result in an improvement in hydrodynamic performance.