A Study of 100 tonf Tensile Load for SMART Mooring Line Monitoring System Considering Polymer Fiber Creep Characteristics

Abstract

Mooring systems are among the most important elements employed to control the motion of floating offshore structures on the sea. Considering the use of polymer material, a new method is proposed to address the creep characteristics rather than the method of using a tension load cell for measuring the tension of the mooring line. This study uses a synthetic mooring rope made from a polymer material, which usually consists of three parts: center, eye, and splice, and which makes a joint for two successive ropes. We integrate the optical sensor into the synthetic mooring ropes to measure the rope tension. The different structure of the mooring line in the longitudinal direction can be used to measure the loads with the entire mooring configuration in series, which can be defined as SMART (Smart Mooring and Riser Truncation) mooring. To determine the characteristics of the basic SMART mooring, a SMART mooring with a diameter of 3 mm made of three different polymer materials is observed to change the wavelength that responds as the length changes. By performing the longitudinal tension experiment using three different SMART moorings, it was confirmed that there were linear wavelength changes in the response characteristics of the 3-mm-diameter SMART moorings. A 54-mm-diameter SMART mooring is produced to measure the response of longitudinal tension on the center, eye, and splice of the mooring, and a longitudinal tension of 100 t in step-by-step applied for the Maintained Test and Fatigue Cycle Test is conducted. By performing a longitudinal tension experiment, wavelength changes were detected in the center, eye, and splice position of the SMART moorings. The results obtained from each part of the installed sensors indicated a different strain measurement depending on the position of the SMART moorings. The variation of the strain measurement with the position was more than twice the result of the difference measurement, while the applied external load increased step-by-step. It appears that there is a correlation with an externally generated longitudinal tensional force depending on the cross-sectional area of each part of the SMART mooring.