• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.08a
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• pp.225-230
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• 2003

The moonpool is a vertical well ill floating barge, frequently found in drilling ships and in diving support vessel. In this paper, numerical simulation of two-dimensional flow in moonpool situated in moving vessel is carried out using the commercial software FLUENT. The focus of the simulation is to understand drag generation mechanics of moonpool flow. To examine the effect of free surface motion on the drag, simulations are also carried out by employing two different boundary conditions at the free surface.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.33-39
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• 2004

The performance of a deep water drillship, is investigated with the view of the characteristics of the thrusters and the resistance increasement due to moonpooi. The model tests have been performed to obtain the resistance of two drillships with the moonpooi open and closed including shape changes of moonpool step. To design the DP system, thrust forces of azimuth thrusters have been measured during azimuthing at zero speed condition. Thrusters, azimuthing under the bottom of ship, have the interactions of the other thrusters due to flow changes made by other thrusters, and the existence of ship hull makes the thrust deduction higher than when the thrust operates by itself. The resistance increasement due to the moonpooi is highly dependent on the step height of the moonpool and the draft. It is found that the height of moonpool step can reduce the resistance increasement by moonpool.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.53-60
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• 2013

A drillship is a representative floating offshore installation. The boom in oil and gas field development has dramatically increased the demands for drillships. Drillships have a moonpool in the center area of the ship for the purpose of drilling. This moonpool has an effect on the seakeeping performance of a drillship in the vicinity of the resonance frequency. Because of the moonpool, drillships act in different resonance modes, called the sloshing mode and piston mode. The objective of this study was to find the moonpool effect on the motion of a drillship through the motion analysis of a currently operating modern compact drillship. The predicted resonance frequencies based on Molin's theoretical formula, Fukuda's empirical formula, and BEM-based numerical analysis are compared. The accuracy of the predictions using the theoretical and empirical formulas is compared with the numerical analysis and evaluated. In the case of the piston mode, the difference between the resonance frequency from theoretical formula and the resonance frequency from the numerical analysis is analyzed. The resonance frequency formula for more a complex moonpool geometry such as a moonpool with a cofferdam is necessarily emphasized.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.20 no.2 s.69
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• pp.46-51
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• 2006

Moonpool characteristics of a cleaning skip related with the performance of a skip are experimentally investigated. Resistance performances of the ship and flow patterns in the moonpool are observed, in order to determine the effect of different shaped moonpool. The ways to reduce ship pithing motion caused by force in the moonpool are examined. Experimental results, using a scale model of cleaning ship with moonpool, show that the step arranged in tier under water leads to significant improvements in performance, such us resistance and ship pithing motion. Depending upon the shape of step in the moonpool, the results indicate that the increment of resistance performance may be up to 35%, especially in the case of no step or high step.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.443-450
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• 2014

The objective of this study is to examine the nonlinear fluid characteristics near and inside a moonpool in various sea conditions. We estimate the flow of the free surface in a moonpool taking into account the viscosity effect and the hydrodynamic forces that affects a moonpool and hull through CFD calculations. The comparison of horizontal forces per wave length shows that the hydrodynamic force is greater for the long wave length than short wave length, and the greatest hydrodynamic force acts on the moonpool when the wave length is equal to the ship's length. The horizontal force decreases as the wave amplitude decreases, and the hydrodynamic force acting on the moonpool in ${\lambda}=LBP$ is 10 times that in ${\lambda}=LBP/3$. The free surface demonstrates the piston mode, in which it oscillates up and down while remaining essentially flat, and the rise of the free surface level increases as the wave length increases. We can assume that the hydrodynamic force acting on the moonpool increases owing to the effect of a strong vortex for ${\lambda}=LBP$ and owing to the rise of the free surface level for ${\lambda}=LBP{\times}2$.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.137-147
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• 2013

Moonpools are vertical wells in a floating body used onboard many types of vessels like cable-laying vessels and offshore support vessels. Moonpool gives passage to underwater activities for different types of ships as per their mission requirements. It is observed that inside a moonpool considerable relative motions may occur, depending on shape, depth of the moonpool and on the frequency range of the waves to which the ship is exposed. The vessel responses are entirely different in zero and non-zero Froude number. Former situation is paid attention in this study as the mission requirement of the platform is to be in the particular location for long period of operation. It is well known that there are two modes of responses depending on the shape of the moonpool viz., piston mode for square shape and sloshing mode for rectangular shapes with different aspect ratios of opening like 1:1.5 and 1:2 ratios. Circular shaped moonpool is also tested for measuring the responses. The vessel moored using heavy lines are modeled and tested in the wave basin. The moored lines are provided with pre-tension and the dynamic tensions on the lines are measured. The different modes of oscillations of water column are measured using wave gauge and the vessel response at a particular situation is determined. RAOs determined for various situations provide better insight to the designer. The experiments done in the wave basin may also be compared with a software package meant for handling moored floating bodies.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.313-323
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• 2013

Offshore floating structures have so-called moonpool in the centre area for the purpose of drilling, installation of subsea structures, recovery of Remotely-Operated Vehicle (ROV) and divers. However, this vertical opening has an effect on the operating performance of floating offshore structure in the vicinity of moonpool resonance frequency; piston mode and sloshing mode. Experimental study based on model test was carried out. Moonpool resonance of floating offshore structure on fixed condition and motion free condition were investigated. And, the effect of cofferdam which is representative inner structure inside moonpool was examined. Model test results showed that Molin's theoretical formula can predict moonpool resonance on fixed condition quite accurately. However, motion free condition has higher resonance frequency when it is compared with that of motion fixed. The installation of cofferdam moves resonance frequency to higher region and also generates secondary resonance at lower frequency. Furthermore, it was found that cofferdam was the cause of generating waves in the longitudinal direction when the vessel was in beam sea.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.544-551
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• 2011

The internal flows of moonpool usually causes huge added resistance on drillships, and those are very complex to analyze. Therefore, not only experimental approaches but also numerical simulations are required for better investigations when dealing with the hydrodynamic problems of moonpool. In the present research, numerical simulations are used to find out why the resistance increases by moonpool on a running drillship. That is, the three-dimensional numerical simulations and model tests are carried out to examine the characteristics of internal flow and added resistance by changing the section of the moonpool in both longitudinal and transverse directions. Finally, based on the present studies, an optimized shape of the moonpool is suggested, which effectively reduces added resistance, and that is confirmed with three-dimensional numerical simulations and model tests.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.118-122
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• 2016

When a geometric size of moonpool and an inflow velocity are determined based on the similarity of Froude number, Reynolds number is depending on the scale ratio of moonpool geometry. It means that different characteristics of flow fluctuations in moonpool can be observed depending on the scale ratio of moonpool even though Froude number is the same. In the present study two dimensional numerical simulations were performed to investigate the influence of scale ratios on the flow characteristics inside the moonpool. The inflow velocity at several scale ratios was determined to keep Froude number constant. A periodic response was observed in a small size of moonpool while a large moonpool showed complicated fluctuations with various amplitudes and frequencies, which made it difficult to distinguish the statistical steady-state response from the temporal responses in the case of large moonpool. The similarity of Froude number gave rise to a spectral characteristic which was inversely proportional to the square root of scale ratios ($f_{0.5}{\approx}{\sqrt{2}}f_1{\approx}2f_{2.0}$) but a low frequent occurrence of strong vortex ($f_{2.0}=0.07$)which is observed inside the large moonpool was characterized depending on scale ratios.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.304-311
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• 2012

One of the main features of Drillship or FPSO is a moonpool structure. The moonpool structures have various accuracy tolerances according to their functions and targets. This study is mainly interested in roundness of a circular moonpool structure in FPSO. Because this structure needs abrasion-resistance at which bearing of machine touches on inner wall of moonpool, we should do over-lay welding widely and deeply by using Inconel weld material. But a general over-lay can cause a severe distortion at ship block structure. If we can analyze the roundness by thermal distortion under Inconel over-lay, we can establish a special erection policy by the results. In this study, we designed stress-strain curve for strain-boundary condition analysis by an elasto-plastic material property. The results made us to decide an appropriate ship-block size and policy of crane manipulation will follow for its capacity. If a structure that needs over-lay is not large, solid elements also are not a bad choice for FEM modeling. Therefore we also developed a standard of using strain-boundary method that shell elements are used as over-lay on solid element modeling.