A Procedure to Analyze the Maneuvering Stability of FPSO Systems in the Design Stage

Abstract

The use of large floating units to operate in deep water appears as a solution adopted by the industry to produce and storage the oil and finally to transfer the oil to shuttle ships. In the particular case of Petrobras the conversion of VLCC to FPSO has been adopted to work in the exploitation of oil in deep water. This has motivated many studies about the dynamics of this kind of structures exposed to the environmental conditions: wind, currents and waves. The present paper deals with the dynamics of ships in the horizontal plane under the action of a current. A maneuvering model is used to express the hydrodynamic forces. Analytical expressions for the eigenvalues of the linear stability analysis are obtained. These expressions are used to analyze the influence of the main dimensions in the design of new structures and the use of some stabilizers.