Sunday, September 26, 2010

Floaters model test - verify of design

Model testing of marine floaters
Small scale model testing is normally required in the process of designing new semi-sub, spars, ships and other marine structures. The ocean basin laboratory is made for testing of offshore structures and the scaling laws and the modelling principles are the same as those developed and used in traditional ship model testing in towing tanks. Model test could be done from large gravity-base concrete platforms to semisubmersibles, spar buoys and floating hoses, in model scales ranging from 1/40 to 1/150 in water depths from 30 m to 1200 m, and these contributed to a comprehensive and unique expertise and knowledge about design of small scale models, instrumentation, and data collection.
Focus of the model tests is to provide information about aspect of the behaviour that are difficult or impossible to obtain from theoretical analysis. These are normally related to extreme wave conditions, steep or breaking waves, interaction phenomena between waves and currents, or other nonlinear hydrodynamic interaction phenomena.

The size of the test basin allows modelling of a complete anchor system down to about 1000 m depth. For structures on greater depth, a technique of truncating the anchor system has been developed. In these cases, results from the model tests are used to provide input for a numerical simulation model that is subsequently used to obtain results for the full depth system. This approach is built on an accumulated experience of modelling truncated systems, and advanced parameter estimation techniques are used for extracting nonlinear hydrodynamic force coefficients from the model test results.


Floater Model Test

No comments: