DEVELOPMENT OF TURRET MOORING SYSTEM FOR FPSO. PART 1

Various kinds of platforms are available for offshore oil production facilities. For deep waters with severe environmental conditions the most advantageous type is the turret moored floating structure with all necessary production facilities and large capacity oil tanks aboard the vessel. So far, however, the turret mooring system has been used only for a small platform having a displacement of up to 40,000 tons. The development of heavy-duty turret mooring system to investigate the mooring force, turret load, deformation of turret and supporting structure and material strength of rollers has been initiated. This paper is the first report on heavy-duty turret mooring system focusing on the selection of hull and mooring system, design of hull and turret mooring system and the estimation of turret load by model tests and numerical simulation. For Part 2 see next Abstract.