An Interactive Numerical-Experimental Approach for Predicting the Vortex Induced Motion of Floating Production Systems

The Vortex Induced Motion (VIM) phenomenon is one of the well-known and important behavior experienced by all Floating Production Systems (FPSs) in operation under the effect of uniform current. In this phenomenon, under the effect of the formed vortices around the FPS hull, the platform oscillates primarily in a direction perpendicular to the flow resulting in a significant fatigue damage to the risers and the station keeping mooring system. Scale towing tank test has been the standard industry tool for predicting the VIM response, but it has its own limitations and has showed to significantly overpredict the VIM response when compared to the field measurements. In this paper, an interactive numerical-experimental approach has been developed to more accurately predict the VIM response and avoid the shortcomings of the model tests to bridge the gap between the model test predictions and the field measurements. Numerical and experimental data are presented to demonstrate the application and advantages of the proposed approach