Quantitative Wear Estimation for Mooring Chain of Floating Structures and Its Validation

Abstract

It is necessary to develop quantitative wear estimation method of mooring chains for floating structures such as floating offshore wind turbine. In our previous research, a numerical analysis combining 1) wear analysis between links by finite element method and 2) response analysis of mooring system has been proposed and validated qualitatively in the case of a single moored buoy. In this paper, the proposed method is applied to a spread moored floating spar with three mooring lines for further validation. Here, the effect of wind in addition to waves on the wear of chains is examined. As a result of comparison, it is found that the wear amounts estimated by the proposed method fairly agree with the measured values. However, it is also found that the estimated wear amounts around the touchdown point and those next to a clump weight considerably overestimate the measured values.