Coupled analysis between catenary mooring and VLFS with structural hydroelasticity in waves

The rapid growth of marine renewables has led to the development of very large floating structures (VLFS) that are designed to operate in deep seas. It is significant to understand the mechanism of the coupled effects between deformable VLFS and catenary mooring system. This paper presents a time-domain hydro-elastic-moored model developed by integrating a quasi-static mooring module into a fully coupled Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) - discrete-module-beam (DMB) approach. The model is used to investigate the coupled effects between structural hydroelasticity and loose-type mooring systems on a deformable VLFS in waves. The mooring and hydroelasticity codes are validated separately and show favourable agreement with other numerical and experimental results. Then the coupled effects between the mooring system and structural hydroelasticity are evaluated by assigning various design parameters, i.e., VLFS structural stiffness and mooring stiffness. The numerical results, including dynamic motions, longitudinal vertical bending moments (VBMs) and mooring tension forces are presented and analysed. These results can be used to design a VLFS with mooring in medium-deep sea, and help with the conventional mooring design for a less-stiffness VLFS due to hydroelastic response.