Calculation of the Dynamic Positioning Capability of an Offshore Wind Farm Vessel During the Jack-Up Process in the Early Design Stage

As a consequence of the planned exit from fossil-based energy in the European Union the exploitation of renewable energies has become a major aspect of the Offshore Industry. Especially the construction and operation of offshore wind energy turbines pose a challenge which is met by the use of jack-up vessels with extendible legs. In order to dimension the vessel’s manoeuvring devices in the early design stage and to ensure a safe jack-up process for given environmental loads the dynamic positioning capability during the jacking including the influence of the legs has to be calculated. As part of the development of a holistic dynamic analysis this paper presents the implementation of the legs’ influence in an existing manoeuvring method. The manoeuvring method solves the equations of motion in three degrees of freedom (surge, sway, yaw). It is based on a force model which comprises various modular components. Therefore another component for the leg-forces is added. A Morison approach is chosen to calculate the hydrodynamic forces on the cylindrical legs. The legs’ hydrodynamic added masses are accounted for and added to the hull’s inertial terms. The benefit of the presented method is the possibility to calculate the dynamic positioning capability with extended legs without being dependent on the results of either time-consuming or non-specific model tests. Therefore the method represents a fast computing tool to design the vessel for the specific environmental conditions of the site of operation.