WP4.

1 – Integrated Simulation of Multiphysical Systems in Offshore Operations

Project Duration: December, 2017 - December, 2020

Objective 1: Develop components to constitute a ‘Standard Library’ Objective 2: Develop a multiphysics model using industry accepted
for Ocean Engineering in the open source Modelica environment. commercial software to simulate the fully coupled response of a drilling riser
in recoil, effectively capturing the influences from the platform & riser
hydrodynamics and response of the hydro-mechanical heave compensator
system to:

Regular Wave Irregular Wave Heave Flexible - Formulate a method to improve fatigue performance of the riser by
Compensator Body controlling the response of the anti-recoil valve of the heave compensator
system.

- Compare the performance of the multiphysics model with real world

operational data sourced through industrial partners.

v v

Floating Wave Energy Variable Mass Floating Surface Model of Hydrodynamic Heave Compensator
Body Converter WEC Platform Semisubmersible Analysis (ANSYS) Control to Reduce Riser
Fatigue
Task 1: Model a portable wave energy
conversion device for low power
applications as an example to
demonstrate the capabilities of Open
Modelica in providing low cost design
solutions in the domain of sustainable
ocean energy.

Task 2: Develop methods to determine the hydrodynamic response of a

semisubmersible platform and carry out hydrodynamic/riser analysis to Catenary Field Time Domain Heave Compensator
benchmark results with those obtained using commercial software. Mooring Measurements Analysis (ORCAFLEX) (SIMULATION X)

Heave Wave Energy Fig. 3: Model of the

Converter Buoy WEC in irregular waves
Sea Spring using the irregular wave
Surface block and standard
components from
Shaft Modelica Mechanical
Library.
Linear
Bearing

Mooring Permanent
Line Magnet
Core

Linear
Electric
Generator
Seabed Coil

Fig. 1: Concept of the portable wave energy converter (WEC) buoy. Fig. 2: Sectional view of the wave energy Fig. 4: Modelica component model with moored
converter buoy. WEC in irregular wave and current.

Modelica components were developed to generate irregular wave records from a PM spectrum with Hs & Tp values as parameters. Froude-Krylov force is used to determine the heave force and the
surge force is to be determined using the Morison equation* within the cylindrical buoy block. Standard components from the mechanical engineering library of Open Modelica is used to model the
internal damped spring mass system. Catenary theory is used to determine the mooring loads. The ocean current block simulates the sheared current. Connectors link the wave and current data to the
environment bus* from which the buoy and mooring system models access the required information to calculate position dependent loads. Subsystems were tested independently and the system
integration is now in progress. Some results from the testing of subsystems are presented below.
* Implementation of the Morison equation and the environment bus is in progress.
Sea surface elevation about SWL (m)

Fig. 5: Irregular wave of required Hs and Tp values generated Fig. 6: Component model to analyze the spectral response of a Fig. 7: Comparison of the wave spectrum and response spectrum for
from a PM wave spectrum using the irregular wave block. floating object. Refer Fig. 7 for results. the model in Fig. 6. Red-spec. used for wave generation, blue- spec.
from SSE measurements, green- spec. of buoy response.
Relative displacement between spring mass and buoy body (m)

Excursion of the WEC CoG from initial location (m)

Fig. 8: Relative motion between the spring mass and the buoy body for the arrangement Fig. 9: Excursion of a catenary moored WEC buoy in current and regular waves. Notice the waviness Fig. 10: Evolution of the catenary mooring profile (t= 0,
depicted in Fig. 3. It is this motion that is converted to electrical energy. of the trajectory due to the variation of current & mooring loads as the buoy heaves. 66 & 264 s). Notice the variation in the TDP.

PhD Candidate: Savin Viswanathan

Supervisors: Assoc. Prof. Christian Holden (NTNU)
Prof. Olav Egeland (NTNU)
Sr. Er. Ronny Sten (NOV)