Assessment of the effect of mooring systems on the horizontal motions with an equivalent force to model

The present work was carried out to assess the performance of an equivalent force model for the rapid analysis of mooring lines subject to horizontal motions. The verification is performed for cases of practical interest. Due to the very distinct behaviour of slack, moderately slack and taught moorings, these are analysed separately and the variation in the model coefficients is justified. It is shown that the methodology provides reasonable estimates of the mooring line behaviour. The final equation is very simple to introduce into a vessel motion program and is also thought to be useful in controller design or stability analysis.