Application of Peak Distribution Method for Response Based Analysis of Mooring Lines Under Tropical Storms

Abstract

Response based analysis (RBA) is a comprehensive approach for the prediction of extreme responses and design metocean conditions of offshore facilities. For RBA, the structural system needs to be modelled, and its behavior analyzed when subjected to large metocean datasets, usually comprising thousands of different sea states. Due to the dynamic and nonlinear behavior of mooring systems in floating structures, application of conventional time domain analysis for RBA of these systems is a computationally demanding process. Hence, investigation of faster solvers and more efficient methods for the RBA is inevitable. Peak distribution method (PDM), which has recently been introduced and used for response analysis of mooring systems under extreme design conditions, is a possible solution to reduce the computational efforts in RBA by reducing the number of simulations. This study explores the utilization of the PDM for RBA of the mooring system of a turret-moored large FPSO subjected to tropical storms. Large variability of metocean parameters within such storms limits the applicability of intuitive judgement for the selection of governing sea states. The results are compared through both time-domain and frequency-domain simulations and a computationally efficient methodology is proposed. It provides a general robust framework of computing the extreme value distribution of the system response. The proposed methodology can be used for RBA of mooring lines tension under storm conditions comprising large number of sea states.