Development of Water Tank Test Device for Deep-Water Mooring

When conducting model tests in a water tank, available model sizes and wave conditions are determined for each tank, depending on measurement accuracy and tank specifications. For deep-water mooring of a floater, a mooring extent in model scale is presumably over 10 meters in depth, making it difficult to be conducted in small-sized tanks without mooring line truncation. The purpose of the research is to develop a device, which could be used as deep-water mooring system in small-sized tanks. Although the law of geometrical similarity is compelled to quit because of the line truncation, the law of mechanical similarity can be maintained by keeping the same restoring, damping and inertia characteristics as those of the full-scale mooring system obtained by numerical simulations. The mooring device consists of a cylinder, a piston, an orifice, springs, pulleys and weights. A spring attached to the mooring line is to generate required restoring force. The orifice, together with the piston, is to generate required damping forces. Inertia forces are generated by the motions of hanged weights, also by the motion of the fluid inside the cylinder. Even negative inertia forces can be given by adjusting natural frequencies of the weight-spring system. With all these examined elements, the mooring device works like the full-depth mooring system. Particulars of the elements of the device have been determined by numerical simulations of the floater moored in the full-depth condition. It has been confirmed that the mooring device behaves as expected in comparison with forced oscillation tests, where prescribed motions were given to the floater-side end point of the mooring line. A tank test has been conducted of a floater with a turret multipoint-moored with the devices and has been satisfactorily compared with numerical simulations of the full-depth system. With the present research it is verified that the mooring device can well simulate actual deep-water mooring system, which makes it possible for small water tanks to deal with deep water mooring experiments.