Journal of Marine Science and Application, Vol.5, No.4, December 2006, pp.

01-07

Calculation of wave and current loads on launching

offshore jacket

ZHANG Guang-fa, JI Zhuo-shang, LI Tie-li, and LIN Yan

Department of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China

Abstract: It’s very complicated to calculate and analyze the wave and current loads on naval
architectures since the sea condition is uncertain and complicated and the determinants vary from
different form types and dimensions. For calculating the wave and current loads on upright
small-long-size pipe, the Morrison equation is practical and applied. Jacket platform is a kind of offshore
space frame structure comprised of lots of poles that are circular cylinders with small diameter and in the
oblique status relative to seabed. In this paper, based on Morrison equation, the specific method and
procedure calculating the wave and current loads on launching jacket are given and applied on a typical
launching jacket. The instance shows that the method and procedure are convenient and make the
calculation and analysis in good agreement with actual launching.
Keywords: launching；hydrodynamic force; morrison equation; jacket platform
CLC number: U661.1 Document code: A Article ID: 1671-9433(2006)04-0001-07

1 Introduction1 structure comprised of lots of poles that are circular

It’s very complicated to calculate and analyze the wave
and current loads on naval architectures since the sea
condition is uncertain and complicated and the
determinants vary from different form types and
dimensions. The induced wave loads on naval
architecture result from the pressure field formed by
wave and the load can be classified into three kinds: drag
force, inertia force and diffracting force. Drag force is
caused by the current disturbance aroused by the sea.
Inertial force is composed of two components, one of
which is the force induced by the pressure field of
incident wave and named as Froude-Crylov force,
another is the additional mass force caused by the inertia
of water. Diffracting force comes into being when taking
into account the wave diffraction due to the structure
body. For the mentioned above wave inductive loads
components, which should be laid particular stress on, it
depends on the model type and dimension of the
structure and the wave environment [1].
Jacket platform is a kind of offshore space frame
Received date :2006-06-22.
Foundation item: Supported by Item of Doctor Subject of
Colleges and University (No.2000014125) and the Education
Office of Liaoning Province (No.05l091).
cylinders with small diameter. The character of the
poles member of jacket is that when the progressive
direction of current is vertical to its axis, due to the
viscosity of the sea water, the current will be separated
on the back of the circular cylinder, which results in a
complicated flowing. For this kind of diffracting flow,
it is difficult to analyze and obtain a practical result
with the theory of potential flow of idea fluid. On the
other side, for the body with small size relative to the
wavelength, generally speaking, D/L<0.2, where D is
diameter of the body and L is wavelength, the drag
force and inertia force are major components.
Currently, the experience analysis and experiment
measure are adopted to resolve the practical
engineering questions, in which the dominant is
Morrison equation, which adopts the semi-experience
and semi-theory method. The Morison equation is
released by American scientists Morrison, O’Brien
and Johnson for calculating the wave and current
loads on small diameter circular cylinders in the sea
water.
For the current load on structure, basically the
wave-current combination may be treated either as a
complex fluid-mechanical phenomenon where the
interaction of wave and current is take into account or
2 Journal of Marine Science and Application, Vol.5, No.4, December 2006
as a relatively simple phenomenon where the
interaction is ignored and the current is simply
superimposed on waves. If the current is in the
direction of wave propagation, the wave amplitude
will decrease and its length increase. If the current is
opposed to the wave, the wave will become steeper
and shorter. In practical engineering, the second
method is adopted. In calculation of wave load, the
current velocity and acceleration are superimposed on
wave water particle to consider the action of current
on structure.
In the jacket launching system, both of the poles
structure of the jacket and its motion are complicated .
When calculating the interaction of the barge and the
jacket and the dynamic response parameters, wave
and current loads are functions of dynamic response
parameters, which are the unknown qualities to be
resolved yet, so it’s difficult and even impossible to
calculate wave and current loads directly.Based on the
Morrison equation, a new and reasonable approach is
described here in somewhat greater details than
needed for calculating wave and current loads on
jacket and launching analysis of the system. The idea
is to calculate dynamically and iteratively the wave
and current loads on oblique pipes like poles of jacket
and a complicated system like the launching jacket.
2 Morrison equations and the calculation
of wave load on the cylindrical pile
with small size
The basic principle of Morrison equation is that, the
wave field will propagate without the effect of the
body basically, namely the velocity and acceleration
will be calculated by its original level dimension and
with the original wave theory, so the wave load on the
cylindrical pile can be comprised of two components
as follows:
1) Drag force Fd , which is the velocity force caused
by the undisturbed wave velocity field. The drag force
on the pile is directly proportional to the square of the
wave velocity vertical to the pile:
dFd = 0.5Cd ρ Du 2 dl , (1)
where Cd is drag coefficient that is relevant to
Reynolds number Re and is a function of current
status, D diameter of the cylinder, ρ the density
of seawater, dl the length of the pile, u the
velocity of wave water particle. As having known that
velocity and acceleration of particle induced by wave
are periodic functions and their horizontal components
may be positive or negative direction along x-axis, i.e.
in the progressive direction of waves or inverse.
Therefore the square of horizontal component u
should be substituted by | u | u in Eq.(1):
dFd = 0.5Cd ρ D | u | udl .
2) Inertia force Fm , which is the acceleration force
on the pile. The inertia force is directly proportional to
the wave acceleration vertical to the pile:
dFm = 0.25Cm ρ πD 2 adl ,
where Cm is the inertia coefficient, a the wave
acceleration vertical to the pile. So the summary wave
force on the pile is:
dF = dFd + dFm = 0.5Cd ρ D u udl + 0.25Cm ρ πD 2 adl.
3 Calculating model of wave force on
the pole member of jacket
3.1 Basic calculating models
Jacket is structured by lots of welding poles locating
in all kinds of directions, including vertical, horizontal
and oblique directions. During launching, the
direction of center axis of an individual pole is not
vertical and fixed to the direction of current velocity
and acceleration.
As Fig.1 shows, the flow hydrodynamics and velocity
of a differential section of a jacket pole can be
projected to the fixed global coordinate system
according to the location of the jacket pole. Since
Morrison equations may be applied to a cylindrical
member oriented in a random manner with respect to
the mud line, the Eq.(1) can be re-written as:
⎡dFx ⎤ ⎡unx ⎤
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎢dFy ⎥ ＝ 0.5Cd ρ D U dl ⎢uny ⎥ ＋
⎢ dF ⎥ ⎢u ⎥
⎣ z⎦ ⎣ nz ⎦
⎡ anx ⎤
2 ⎢ ⎥
0.25Cm ρ πD dl ⎢ any ⎥ . (2)
⎢a ⎥
⎣ nz ⎦
where u nx , u ny , u nz and a nx , a ny , a nz represent
the components of velocity and acceleration vectors of
flow water particle vertical to the differential section
of the pole in the global coordinate in the x , y ,