Page 14: of Marine Technology Magazine (November 2017)

Offshore: Deepwater Mooring

Don’t Let the Ocean

Knock You Down

Using dynamic analysis software to assess mooring deployment, recovery and performance in current and waves

By Dean Steinke or many years, moorings have Numerical modeling software for sin- been designed using basic mass- gle point moorings has come a long way

Fdrag-buoyancy calculations, in recent years. Finite-element based ca- spreadsheets, rules-of-thumb, black ble analysis software has been tested and magic scripts and a dose of ‘salty-sea- developed by oceanographic institutions

Figure 1: dog’ experience. With these methods and ocean engineers for various pur-

The ProteusDS software pre- one can frequently estimate a line size poses (towed bodies, ROVs, moorings, processor is shown. This software to use or an approximate anchor weight. etc). However, its use has been typically allows users to add mooring

But sometimes this isn’t good enough. limited to a few advanced numerical elements such as shackles and

This article looks at getting more pre- modeling specialists who had both the swivels from a central library. Line cise with mooring analysis using nu- expertise and patience to wade through types such as Amsteel Blue or merical modeling software designed for the complex analysis process. In recent wire rope can likewise be se- ocean engineers. years, increasingly re