Numerical simulation of motion response of an offshore observation platform in waves

Abstract

Offshore observation platforms are required to have great ability to resist waves when they are operating at sea. Investigation on the motion characteristics of the platforms in the sea can provide significant reference values during the platform design procedure. In this paper, a series of numerical simulation on the interaction of a triple-hulled offshore observation platform with different incident waves is carried out. All of the simulations are implemented utilizing our own solver naoe-FOAM-SJTU, which is based and developed on the open source tools of OpenFOAM. Duration curves of motion characteristics and loads acting on the platform are obtained, and a comparison between the results of the amplitude in different incident waves is presented. The results show that the solver is competent in the simulation of motion response of platforms in waves.

Keywords

offshore observation platform / motion characteristics / naoe-FOAM-SJTU solver / finite volume method (FVM) / pressure-implicit-split-operator (PISO)