Preliminary Design of Mooring Systems

Abstract

The preliminary design of mooring systems is formulated by separating the quasi-steady solution from the dynamic solution. A multiple time-scale expansion provides the appropriate equations, which are nonlinear for the quasi-steady part and linear space varying for the dynamic part. The fast dynamic solution consists of a fast varying and a slowly varying part with respect to space. An asymptotic solution is obtained by using the WKB method for the fast part, while an approximate expression is derived for the slow part. The resulting solution is simple and can be used to determine the dynamic behavior of complex systems, while permitting an extensive parametric search and the use of spectral techniques. This formulation leads to rational measures of the dynamic performance which, combined with cost considerations obtained from the static solution, permit an optimal selection of the system parameters. An example demonstrates the features of this methodology.