Experimental Study on Application of an Optical Sensor to Measure Mooring-Line Tension in Waves

Moored floating platforms have great potential in ocean engineering applications because a mooring system is necessary to keep the platform in station, which is directly related to the operational efficiency and safety of the platform. This paper briefly introduces the technical and operational details of an optical sensor for measuring the tension of mooring lines of a moored platform in waves. In order to check the performance of optical sensors, an experiment with a moored floating platform in waves is carried out in the wave tank at Changwon National University. The experiment is performed in regular waves and irregular waves with a semi-submersible and triangle platform. The performance of the optical sensor is confirmed by comparing the results of the tension of the mooring lines by the optical sensor and tension gauges. The maximum tension of the mooring lines is estimated to investigate the mooring dynamics due to the effect of the wave direction and wavelength in the regular waves. The significant value of the tension of mooring lines in various wave directions is estimated in the case of irregular waves. The results show that the optical sensor is effective in measuring the tension of the mooring lines. Received 11 February 2022, revised 16 April 2022, accepted 22 May 2022 Corresponding author Hyeon Kyu Yoon: +82-55-213-3683, hkyoon@changwon.ac.kr This paper was presented on the subject of “Experimental Study on Application of Optical Sensor in Mooring Line of Moored Floating Platform in Waves” in the Proceedings of the 2021 KAOSTS Joint Conference. c 2022, The Korean Society of Ocean Engineers This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution non-commercial license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.