On the Validity of CFD for Simulating a Shallow Water CALM Buoy in Extreme Waves

The Catenary Anchor-Leg Mooring (CALM) is the most popular and widely-used type of offshore loading terminal. A CALM buoy consists of a floating buoy anchored to the seabed by catenary chain legs which are secured to anchors or piles. Due to the small inertia of CALM buoys, the mooring line responses are very sensitive to waves and considerable fatigue risk is introduced to the mooring lines. Extreme waves may even lead to mooring line failure. Therefore it is highly relevant to study the motions of the CALM buoy in (extreme) wave conditions. This paper presents a validation study of a coupled CFD – dynamic mooring model for simulating the response of a shallow water CALM buoy in extreme waves (Figure 1). Simulations of an interactively moving CALM buoy in a horizontal mooring system were performed by coupling a Navier-Stokes based finite-volume, VoF CFD solver with a dynamic mooring model. The CFD results are validated against model tests performed in MARIN’s shallow-water basin during the ComFLOW-2 joint industry project. The validation study concentrates on the correct prediction of the coupled responses of the CALM buoy in extreme, regular shallow-water waves. As an alternative to simulations with a fully coupled dynamic mooring set-up, also CFD simulations are presented in which the mooring system is represented by a linearly equivalent spring matrix, including cross terms. The importance of correctly modelling these cross terms is presented in the paper, and the results obtained with- and without these off-diagonal spring terms are compared.