Numerical Simulations for Towing Resistance of Semi Submersible Drilling Platform

The semi submersible drilling platform plays an important role in the development of the deepwater oil resources.For the demand of the short distance translocation in an oil field,the deep draft towing maybe encountered.Under this condition,the whole pontoons and the braces,part of the cylinders submerged in the water which caused towage resistance,but there was no empirical data to consult.Thus the software FLUENT was used here to compute the drag resistance of the platform in a uniform viscous flow with deep draft,and the comparison was made to the one with a shallow draft.According to the results,under the speed of 2 m/s,the drag resistance of the pontoons took about 50% of the whole,while the braces and the cylinders took around 25% each,the resistance with a deep draft was twice the one with shallow draft.The research results may provide good proposal to the design of a new platform.