In extreme weather permanently moored FPSOs may be overtopped by large amounts of greenwater, resulting in damage to deck structures and downtime. Thus, the preliminary design process for FPSOs has often included structural protection to mitigate loads from greenwater on deck and ensure structural integrity of top side structures at the bow in harsh sea conditions. This paper numerically investigates greenwater at the bow of an FPSO fitted with a ‘whaleback’ or ‘duck-bill’ shaped forecastle that is represented as an angled extension to the freeboard. In this study, the whaleback forecastle is intended to completely deflect the greenwater flow off the forecastle head. Previously validated numerical models based on OpenFOAM, an open source Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) package, are used. The (vertical) run-up height and the forces on the whaleback are analysed based on the CFD results to quantify the effectiveness of the design. It is found that the parameter tan β ( FE / λ p ) that combines the coupled effect of the whaleback geometry and the incoming wave is important for determining the run-up height. The use of this parameter leads to a crude method for fast estimates of the effectiveness of such structures. Increase of the slope of the whaleback forecastle increases the run-up height, thus, increases the horizontal greenwater loading on such structure, however, the direct effect of the slope on the horizontal greenwater loading is found to be limited. An opposite trend is observed for the vertical greenwater loading in which the forecastle slope still plays a significant role even if the effect of run-up height is excluded, as a result of overtopping volume. Additionally, the vertical component of greenwater loading dominates the total greenwater loading on the whaleback forecastle.

In this paper, 2D greenwater overtopping of a floating box is numerically investigated using CFD. The incident waves used are compact wave groups which correspond to the maximum relative wave elevation at the edge of the box according to linear theory. The motion of the box for which only heave and pitch modes are considered is calculated using linear potential flow theory and then prescribed in the CFD simulation. It is found that the normalized maximum horizontal momentum flux of greenwater overtopped onto the moving box is consistent with that for a fixed box when the incident wave length is much smaller than the box length. For longer incident wave lengths there is arguably more scatter in the momentum flux compared with that of a fixed box, although the result is still bounded by a value of 1.5 times that predicted by a classical dam break solution. This additional scatter is shown to be due to the effect of box motion.

Water wave propagation over shallowly submerged structures is of much interest in the context of submerged wave energy devices, breakwaters or barrier reefs. This work examines waves passing over a two-dimensional shallowly submerged fixed step extending to the seabed. The problem has been modelled in CFD using the open source toolbox OpenFoam utilising the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes Equations. These simulations are compared to experimental work from a previous study as means of validation and extended to larger amplitude waves for a single incident wave frequency. The flow over the step is characterised and examined in the context of developing an efficient hybrid numerical model for the problem.

The on-bottom stability design of subsea pipelines and cables is important to ensure safety and reliability but can be challenging to achieve, particularly for renewable energy projects which are preferentially located in high energy metocean environments. Often these conditions lead to the seabed being stripped of all loose sediment, leaving the cables to rest on exposed bedrock where roughness features can be similar in size to the cables. As offshore renewable energy projects progress from concept demonstration to commercial-scale developments, new approaches are needed to capture the relevant physics for small diameter cables on rocky seabeds to reduce the costs and risks of export power transmission and increase operational reliability. These same considerations also apply to the cables and small diameter pipes — such as umbilicals — required by oil and gas projects located on rocky seabeds. Recent experimental testing using the University of Western Australia’s unique Large O-tube has enabled the experimental measurement of hydrodynamic forces on small diameter cables and pipes in proximity to smooth and rough beds. The tested conditions extend well beyond the existing published parameter range including much higher KC conditions together with seabed roughness which is comparable in size to the diameter. The results provide design data of great relevance to the ongoing development of marine renewable and conventional oil and gas projects, especially on rocky seabeds. This paper presents a summary of the existing knowledge on the subject as a preface to preliminary test results and gives tentative conclusions on the likely outcomes from this work.

Estimating the horizontal rate of scour propagation along a submarine pipeline is a key step in estimating changes in the pipelines burial state and on-bottom stability due to sediment transport. However, whilst recent work has been undertaken to estimate the horizontal rate for non-cohesive uniform sands in steady current, in field conditions currents can vary in time and the sediment can be fine grained and exhibit very different erosion properties to sand. As a first attempt to account for these complications, in this paper we present results from a series of experiments designed to measure the rate of scour along a model pipeline in time varying currents and in a fine grained sediment. The scour experiments are also supplemented by erosion testing, which indicate that the erosion resistance of the fine grained sediment is larger than that predicted by the well-known Shields curve. Based on the scour experiments, it is found that in time-varying currents the scour rate can be predicted using an amalgamation of the results obtained for steady current conditions; this is a convenient result because theoretical predictions already exist for the scour rate in steady current conditions. In the fine grained sediment experiments, it is found that the horizontal rate of scour is much lower than that predicted by existing theoretical models that assume a non-cohesive sandy seabed. To provide an improved estimate of the horizontal rate of scour, a new theoretical model is introduced that relates the horizontal rate of scour to the measured erosion properties of the sediment. This new model is found to agree well with the experimental measurements. Although further experimental testing is recommended, in combination, it appears that these results may be used to better estimate the horizontal rate of scour in both time-varying and fine grained sediment.

At OMAE in 2008 the ‘state of the art’ in pipeline on-bottom stability engineering was summarized, providing an overview of the current available knowledge for addressing pipeline stability. The aim of that work was to summarise key aspects of the pipeline stability design process and to include some historical perspective. The paper discusses the advantage and shortfalls of the different design approaches with a view to consolidate understanding, rather than to provide a ready-made solution to a complex design problem [1]. Since that time, a decade of research and further methodology refinement has extended the boundaries of the industry’s knowledge and understanding of the behaviour of subsea pipelines and cables, including geotechnics, hydrodynamics, oceanography and structural response modelling. In particular, progress has been made in: • The response of pipelines to sediment transport and scour; • Understanding the behaviour of small diameter pipelines and cables within wave and current boundary layers; and • The behaviour of cables on rocky seabeds in high energy marine environments. This paper summarises these innovations to enable the application of new paradigms in engineering practice and improved outcomes for initial project capital cost, reliability and operational integrity, as well as better models to predict the long-term behaviour where pipes are decommissioned in-situ. While a relatively widely studied field of engineering, there remain areas of active ongoing research to improve our understanding and ability to model and predict subsea pipeline on-bottom behavior, with a summary of the anticipated future opportunities proposed.

As offshore renewable energy projects progress from concept demonstration to commercial-scale developments there is a need for improved approaches beyond conventional cable engineering design methods that have evolved from larger diameter pipelines for the oil and gas industry. New approaches are needed to capture the relevant physics for small diameter cables on rocky seabeds to reduce the costs and risks of power transmission and increase operational reliability. This paper reports on subsea cables that MeyGen installed for Phase 1a of the Pentland Firth Inner Sound tidal stream energy project. These cables are located on rocky seabeds in an area where severe metocean conditions occur. ROV field observation of these cables shows them to be stable on the seabed with little or no movement occurring over almost all of the cable routes, despite conventional engineering methods predicting significant dynamic movement. We cite recent research undertaken by the University of Western Australia (UWA) to more accurately assess the hydrodynamic forces and geotechnical interaction of cables on rocky seabeds. We quantify the conformity between the cables and the undulating rocky seabed, and the distributions of cable-seabed contact and spanning via simulations of the centimetric-scale seabed bathymetry. This analysis leads to calculated profiles of lift, drag and seabed friction along the cable, which show that all of these load and reaction components are modelled in an over-conservative way by conventional pipeline engineering techniques. Overall, our analysis highlights that current cable stability design can be unnecessarily conservative on rocky seabeds. Our work foreshadows a new design approach that offers more efficient cable design to reduce project capex and enhance through-life integrity management.

In this paper a beam bending model is combined with existing predictive formulas for pipeline scour to study changes to pipeline stability during scour and lowering. The model is introduced and demonstrated for a range of simplified conditions, including scour-induced lowering of a pipeline resulting from multiple uniformly spaced scour initiation points. The model is then used with a synthetic seabed generated with a variety of length scales. In this simulation the pipeline is ‘laid’ onto the seabed, leading to the formation of ‘natural’ initiation points for scour. The distribution and spacing of the initiation points (which are a function of the pipeline bending stiffness, tension and seabed roughness) lead to different rates of pipeline lowering and stability. The resulting model may be used within a probabilistic framework to estimate changes to pipeline stability resulting from sediment mobility and scour.

The on-bottom stability design of subsea pipelines is important to ensure safety and reliability but is challenging to achieve, particularly in Australia due to onerous metocean and seabed conditions, and the prevalence of light gas pipelines. This challenge has been amplified by the fact that industry design guidelines have given no guidance on how to incorporate the potential benefits of seabed mobility, which can lead to lowering and self-burial of the pipeline on a sandy seabed. In this paper, we review the learnings of the STABLEpipe Joint Industry Project (JIP), which was initiated with the aim of developing new design guidelines to assess the on-bottom stability of pipelines on mobile seabeds. The paper summarises the new research undertaken within the STABLEpipe JIP to better predict sedimentation and scour, pipe-fluid interaction and pipe-soil interaction. New design methods to assess the on-bottom stability are also outlined, which have been developed based on the new research. These methods have been adopted in a DNVGL guideline authored by the JIP researchers in collaboration with DNVGL and presently available for use by the JIP participants. Finally, applications of the STABLEpipe JIP outcomes and focus areas for further work are discussed.

The effect of bow flare angle on greenwater overtopping is numerically investigated using CFD with a VOF surface capturing scheme. A two dimensional fixed rectangular box with a flare angle is adopted to represent a Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading Unit (FPSO) with flare. Deep water conditions are assumed. The incident waves are focused wave groups based on the New Wave formulation, which represents the most probable free surface elevation around a large crest and includes much of the spectral properties of the underlying random sea state. Bow flare angles of 10, 30 and 50 degrees are analysed, which cover the typical range of a FPSO unit. For the box model, the length L , draft D and freeboard f are modelled as L/D = 15 and f/D = 0.25, which are typical dimensions for a FPSO. A range of wave steepness and relative length are considered, which lead to a variety of overtopping conditions including the hammer fist (HF), plunging plus dam break (PDB) and dam break (DB) greenwater events observed for vessels with no bow flare angle. The numerical simulations are performed using the open source CFD toolbox OpenFOAM of version 2.4.0 together with a fully nonlinear wave generation and absorption utility waves2Foam. The effect of the bow flare angle is quantified by analyzing changes in freeboard exceedance, overtopping volume and horizontal momentum flux of water on deck flow for different bow flare angles. The results indicate that, for the special case in which the vessel is fixed, the bow flare angle can significantly reduce each of these quantities. It is also shown that trends in the overtopping volume and momentum flux can be explained reasonably well using the modified dam break model proposed by Zhang et al. [14].

The behavior of pipelines, cables and umbilicals on rocky seabeds has to date received little research attention. This is despite the marine renewable energy and oil and gas industries relying on these ‘pipes’ to cross a variety of rocky seabed types in the presence of extreme metocean conditions. Present design solutions are challenging and costly, yet there remains a track record of in-service failures. This paper forms part of a wider research effort being undertaken by the University of Western Australia (UWA) into pipe behavior on rocky seabeds. This work includes the effects intermittent gaps have on hydrodynamic forces, the effect of seabed roughness on enhanced boundary layer thickness and the validity of existing hydrodynamic force models for small diameter cables. In this paper, the lateral resistance of pipes on rocky seabeds is investigated using both physical and numerical testing of model pipes over artificially-created rocky seabeds. Four model pipes of varying diameter have been displaced laterally over 1 m square model rocky seabeds, with a range of pipe to rock diameters. The lateral resistance of the physical pipe tests were recorded using load cells and a digital data-logger. Analysis of the physical test results has enabled comparison to (and refinement of) numerical models as well as improved understanding of the importance of different parameters. Our results show peak frictions above 6 arising under conditions where interface friction is only about 0.3, which contrasts dramatically with the friction value of 0.6 nominated in F109. This work contributes towards generation of new design methods suitable for application to field conditions.

This paper addresses the process of establishing a numerical model to accurately reproduce experimental results presented by Zhao et al. (2017) of three-dimensional (3D) gap resonance between two fixed ship-shaped boxes. The ship-shaped boxes were arranged in a side-by-side configuration to represent FLNG offloading and were subjected to NewWave-type transient wave groups. To develop the numerical model we employ the open-source Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) package OpenFOAM and systematically optimize mesh topology and size, domain size and boundary conditions. CFD is necessary for this problem to accurately reproduce the viscous losses and non-linear free surface effects that are observed in the experiments. The incident transient wave group used in the experiment is regenerated using various iterative schemes. The results show satisfactory agreements between the target and regenerated waves.

Floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facilities are a new type of offshore structure, which have been developed as a game changer in offshore hydrocarbon development for unlocking stranded gas reserves. One of the key challenges associated is offloading from FLNG facilities to LNG carriers. Offloading may proceed with vessels in a side-by-side configuration, which allows offtake by un-modified vessels and minimizes requirements for new hardware or procedures (e.g. compared to a tandem operation). Significant challenges remain, however, and reliable offloading is critical for successful FLNG implementation. In this scenario, the two vessels are separated by a narrow 4 m wide gap. The resonant response of the sea surface in the gap has been predicted by numerical simulations [1] to be a few times that of the incident waves at particular frequencies. As a consequence, the gap resonant response may play a role in determining the operational window for side-by-side offloading operations, and thus has attracted a lot of attention recently. There have been studies on this topic both numerically and experimentally. However, many of these studies are in 2 dimensions (2D), for relatively large gaps and relatively shallow water depth, which may pose difficulties when extending the results to a real project. It is unclear what will happen for a gap resonance if the gap width gets narrower (say 4 m in full scale) and the water depth gets deeper (say 600 m in full scale). In this study, we conducted a series of model tests at a scale of 1:60 in a large wave basin, and focused on deep water and, crucially, narrow gaps, which are closer to a real project geometry. To facilitate future numerical simulations, we used two identical fixed bodies in the model tests and the vessels were simple barge-like shapes. Using white noise waves as the excitation, which covers a broad brand, the response of the fluid in the gap has been measured at several points. In these experiments, different modes of the gap resonance have been observed. Response amplitude operators (RAOs) of the gap resonance have been obtained through spectral analyses, which provide valuable information for the design of side-by-side operations and will benefit future numerical simulations. Test runs in white noise waves with different significant wave heights were also performed, to study the nonlinearities of the gap resonance phenomenon.

This paper presents interpretation of the results of 2D CFD modelling using ANSYS Fluent, which has been undertaken for a parametric range of over 200 cases, including over 60 different seabed geometries, pipe diameters and seabed roughnesses as well as a range of steady current, wave and combined wave / current cases. Through analysis of the results including evaluation of seabed shear stress amplification factors compared to far-field ambient values, integration across the seabed of seabed shear stresses and bedload transport potential, the conditions under which sedimentation can be expected are predicted. The results have relevance to improving our understanding of sedimentation (backfilling) around subsea pipelines under live bed conditions, since the presence of shear-stress deficits or shadows leads to enhanced accretion of sediment in the region of a pipeline, even where there is localised amplification of shear stress right next to the pipe. The results are expected to enable better approaches design of subsea pipeline stability on erodible seabeds, or on impermeable rocky beds where veneers of mobile sediment are present.

This paper describes a numerical study investigating the effect of sediment transport and associated changes in the local seabed profile on the drained breakout resistance of subsea pipelines. Limit analyses were conducted assessing the breakout response of a pipeline placed on a cohesionless Mohr-Coulomb material considering different seabed profiles around the pipeline. These profiles were determined from surveys of a pipeline on an erodible seabed. The parametric study shows the relative importance of various parameters describing the seabed profile geometry, including the local pipe embedment and the adjacent slope of the seabed. Significant changes in drained resistance occur due to changes in local pipeline embedment resulting from scour induced pipeline lowering and/or sedimentation. The seabed slope local to the pipeline also has a strong impact. The assumption of a flat seabed can lead to predicted seabed resistance that differs significantly from the actual value, accounting for a more natural seabed profile.

There are various candidate sites for tidal stream energy extraction in the English Channel. In this paper we examine the tidal stream resource at Portland Bill and the south coast of the Isle of Wight. A depth-averaged numerical model is developed and compared to field measurements. The presence of rows of tidal turbines is simulated using a line-discontinuity to represent the head loss across the turbines. The head loss is given by linear momentum actuator disc theory. At each site the length of the turbine rows, the local blockage ratio, and the location of the turbines are varied. For Portland Bill the presence of an array with multiple rows of turbines is also considered. We find that it is likely that (based purely on the hydrodynamics) power could viably be extracted at each site, with the mean power produced by each site being in the order of 10s MW.

This paper summarizes the results of a series of experiments performed in a recirculating flume (namely the mini O-tube) to investigate the onset of scour below pipelines in steady currents. The experiments were performed on model seabed with two different lengths, to assess the effects of sediment supply on the potential for onset of scour. In each experiment the flow velocity and pipeline embedment were recorded continuously. These measurements have been compared with an empirical formula proposed by Sumer et al. (2001) which predicts the onset velocity of a pipeline partially buried in a flat seabed. In general, present experimental results show that when the upstream sediment supply is limited, onset of scour may happen due to piping at a velocity well below that predicted by the empirical formula, but following significant local scouring around the pipe. This result, although only preliminary, suggests the potential for tunnel erosion beneath deeply embedded pipelines in the field where the sediment supply upstream of the pipe may be interrupted by rock outcrops or seabed slopes. A series of numerical simulations have also been conducted to investigate the dynamic pressure difference between upstream and downstream of the pipeline prior to onset of scour. The numerical results show that despite local scour significantly alters the surrounding seabed for a deeply embedded pipe, the pressure gradient across the pipe is similar in magnitude to that measured for a flat seabed and is of sufficient size to cause piping.

Under cyclonic conditions, sediment on the North West Shelf (NWS) of Australia may become mobile in shallow water due to classical sediment transport or local liquefaction, and this can affect, for example, the on-bottom stability of subsea pipelines. In this paper, three calcareous sediments sampled from the NWS are analysed, together with realistic metocean data, to illustrate this potential for sediment mobility on the NWS. Specifically, experiments are performed in a recirculating flume (known as an O-Tube) to measure the erosional behaviour and an additional series of experiments are performed using a shaking table, on which each of the sediments have been liquefied and excess pore pressure measurements recorded to back calculate the consolidation coefficient. Soil characterisation data, threshold velocity measurements and shaking table results have then combined to illustrate the potential for sediment mobility for each of the NWS sediments. Best practice models are used to calculate wave and current combined shear stress at the seabed and excess pore pressure accumulation. We find that for these sediments, freshly deposited in laboratory samples, mobility due to sediment transport or liquefaction is very likely in cyclonic conditions on the NWS. Liquefaction is most likely for loosely packed silt, whilst sediment transport is most likely for sand. However, we also show that in more extreme cyclonic conditions there are a subset of sediments that can become mobile due to both sediment transport and liquefaction.