An Advanced Test Method to Determine Viscous Damping of Floating Structures

Abstract

ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company developed an advanced model test method to determine reliable damping values for predicting low frequency motions of an FLNG barge and an LNG carrier. Since viscous damping forces are a very small portion of the total force on the model, how to separate the viscous forces from the total forces is the key technical challenge. To better isolate viscous damping forces, an inertial compensation system consisting of springs was employed in the test. The spring stiffness was designed such that the restoring force cancelled the large inertial loads at the oscillation frequency. Furthermore, double-body models were built and were deeply submerged to minimize surface wave damping. With such an experimental setup, the total force measured was mainly the viscous damping force. Viscous damping was derived from the measured force and motion time histories.