Greenwater damage to floating structures results from high pressures and loads that occur when wave crests inundate the structure far above the waterline in areas not designed to withstand such pressures. Greenwater damage is the result of unique combinations of vessel motions and incident wave conditions; roll, pitch and yaw of a turret-moored FPSO in hurricane seas. The interactions of the waves and floating structures are being studied both analytically and experimentally to better understand the complex flows around and over a structure, and the resulting impact loads and pressures than can cause the type of damage. In addition to the FPSO's, the project also included other structure geometries such as Spars or TLP's.
A fixed 2D rectangular structure based on the dimensions of a typical TLP (1:168 scaled down) was tested in the laboratory flume using extreme waves breaking and impinging on the structure with greenwater. Velocity fields in the vicinity of the structure, including greenwater, were measured over the entire impinging process using the traditional particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique and a newly developed PIV method that directly tracks the air bubbles.
Completed