Experimental study of freak wave impacts on a tension-leg platform

This study investigates the freak wave impinging on a tension-leg platform through wave flume experiments. The freak waves are generated using the focused wave theory. By adjusting the wave focusing location, different incident wave scenarios at the structure location are produced. Simultaneous measurements of wave shape evolutions upon impingement, wave impact pressures on the platform deck, platform motions and tether forces are carried out for synchronized analyses of the wave kinematics/dynamics and structural responses. The variation of these parameters with the incident wave profile is studied. It is found that although applying less intensive local impact pressures as compared to the highly-breaking freak wave, the slightly-breaking or non-breaking freak wave imposes the same level of adverse effect on the platform's global stability in terms of motions and tether forces. In addition, the high-crest freak wave causes violent motions of the floating platform, which are likely to induce snap loads of large amplitude and high occurrence frequency in tethers. The published results would provide useful benchmarks for validating numerical and analytical models.     

On the slack phenomena and snap force in tethers of submerged floating tunnels under wave conditions

Under severe sea wave conditions, the mooring tethers of submerged floating tunnel (SFT) might go slack. It may cause the structure failure during the service lifetime of SFT. The paper investigated SFT dynamics when going through tether slacking and the related snap force under wave conditions. Besides the nonlinearity of fluid drag and of structural geometry for a relative large structure displacement, the problem is characterized by the nonlinearity due to the discontinuity in axial stiffness of the tethers. To include these nonlinearities, the method of Lagrange energy is used to build the governing equations of SFT motion, and a bilinear oscillator is introduced to simulate the mooring tether operating in an alternating slack-taut state. The sensitivities of the occurrence of tether slacking to wave height and wave period are investigated. Results show that at a large wave height SFT tether will go slack and snap force occurs. SFT responses are categorized into three types of state according to the dynamic response characteristics of tether tension. Effects of two fundamental structure parameters, buoyancy-weight ratio (BWR) and inclined mooring angle (IMA), on the dynamic responses of SFT are analyzed. A slack-taut map of SFT tethers is built. It intuitively describes the occurrences of slack and snap force with different combinations of the two parameters. An analytical approach for slack prediction by deriving the slack criterion is provided to reveal the mechanism of the presented slack-taut map. By present research, the authors tried to make their effort to provide an alternative philosophy for SFT structural design on concerning preventing the occurrence of tether slacking and snap force.