Application of the monitoring and early warning system for internal solitary waves: Take the second natural gas hydrates production test in the South China Sea as an example

Abstract

Internal solitary waves (ISWs) contain great energy and have the characteristics of emergency and concealment. To avoid their damage to offshore engineering, a new generation of monitoring and early warning system for ISWs was developed using technologies of double buoys monitoring, intelligent real-time data transmission, and automatic software identification. The system was applied to the second natural gas hydrates (NGHs) production test in the Shenhu Area, South China Sea (SCS) and successfully provided the early warning of ISWs for 173 days (from October 2019 to April 2020). The abrupt changes in the thrust force of the drilling platform under the attack of ISWs were consistent with the early warning information, proving the reliability of this system. A total of 93 ISWs were detected around the drilling platform. Most of them occurred during the spring tides in October-December 2019 and April 2020, while few of them occurred in winter. As suggested by the theoretical model, the full-depth structure of ISWs was a typical current profile of mode-1, and the velocities of wave-induced currents can reach 80 cm/s and 30 cm/s, respectively, in the upper ocean and near the seabed. The ISWs may be primarily generated from the interactions between the topography and semidiurnal tides in the Luzon Strait, and then propagate westward to the drilling platform. This study could serve as an important reference for the early warning of ISWs for offshore engineering construction in the future.

Keywords

Internal solitary wave / Early warning / Offshore engineering / Drilling platform / Natural gas hydrates production test / Shenhu Area / South China Sea

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Bin-bin Guo, Qian-yong Liang and Chu-jin Liang conceived of the presented idea. Yi-fei Dong and Xue-min Wu carried out the implementation, Dan-yi Su, Chu-jin Liang, Fei-long Lin and Su-meng Jiang developed the theoretical formalism, performed the analytic calculations, and contributed to the interpretation of the results. Dan-yi Su and Bin-bin Guo wrote the manuscript with input from all authors.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgment

This study was funded by the Key Special Project for Introduced Talents Team of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou) (GML2019ZD0307), the Marine Geological Survey Program of China Geological Survey (DD20190218, DD20221706), the Key Program of Marine Economy Development Special Foundation of Department of Natural Resources of Guangdong Province (GDNRC [2020] 043), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China(41806074,41730528). The authors would like to extend their gratitude to the staff of all expeditions of R/V Haiyangdizhi 6 and R/V Haiyangdizhi 4 for their assistance in the setting, picking up, and maintenance of the buoys used in this study.

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