A POSSIBLE FAILURE MODE FOR LEEWARD MOORING LINES ON A FLOATING

STORAGE UNIT
Vegard Aksnes

MARINTEK AS
Trondheim, Norway
Email: vegard.aksnes@marintek.sintef.no
Terje Nyb
Statoil ASA
Bergen, Norway
Email: tenyb@statoil.com
Halvor Lie
MARINTEK AS
Trondheim, Norway
Email: halvor.lie@marintek.sintef.no
ABSTRACT
The oating storage unit Navion Saga at the Volve eld in
the North Sea suffered from two mooring line breaks in steel wire
ropes in 2011. Investigations of the broken ropes indicated that a
possible failure mechanism could be high stresses near the wire
socket induced by large bending moments in leeward mooring
lines. The scope of the current study has been to make a numer-
ical model capable of capturing such behaviour of the steel wire
rope and to check if the minimum bending radius could be as low
as the ropes specied minimum bending radius.
The numerical model has revealed a possible failure mecha-
nism. The connecting link plate between the upper chain segment
and the upper wire segment lies initially on the seabed. When
lifted off the seabed, the link plate and the wire socket will fall
to the seabed at a higher speed than the upper wire segment. A
transverse wave in mooring line plane propagating towards fair-
lead is generated when the wire socket hits the seabed. The wave
leads to large curvature in the wire near the socket. Sensitivity
studies of the governing parameters have been performed to as-
sess the uncertainties of the numerical model. A modied system
is presented and it is shown that the phenomenon which is likely
to have caused failure in the original system will not occur for
the modied one.
BACKGROUND
The Volve eld is located in the North Sea, about 200 km
West of Stavanger in Norway. The layout of the eld is shown
in Fig. 1. The gas is exported through an export pipeline and

Address all correspondence to this author.

the crude oil is exported to the oating storage and ofoading
unit Navion Saga. The crude oil is ofoaded from Navion Saga
to shuttle tankers at regular intervals. The main particulars of
Navion Saga are given in Table 1.
The mooring system of Navion Saga is designed accord-
ing to regulations by Norwegian Maritime Directorate (NMD)
(which to large extent refers to [1]) and Det Norske Veritas
(DNV) [2] regulations. All mooring components are certied
by DNV. Navion Saga is passively moored by means of 9 moor-
ing lines that are connected to the ship by the submerged turret
buoy of the STL system. Each mooring line is composed of pile
anchor, chain, wire, chain and wire. The diameter of the studless
chain is 125 mm R3 and R4 quality, and the diameter of the un-
sheathed spiral strand wire ropes are 106 mm and 114 mm. The
water depth at the Volve eld is about 90 m.
Breakage of two wire ropes was observed near the wire
socket at the lower end of the upper wire segment in lines 1 and 4
(see Fig. 2) during inspection of the mooring lines in 2011. The
exact time of the failures is not known. The anodes on the wire
sockets were missing and the wire ropes were corroded. The
damaged parts were sent to a material laboratory for investiga-
tion. The chemical and mechanical properties were checked and
found to comply with requirements. Furthermore, all fractured
strands had cup and cone failure indicating ductile overload. The
mooring analysis indicated satisfactory safety factors in pure ten-
sion when using maximum tension as a measure. This, together
with the fact that the broken mooring lines were leeward to the
dominating storm directions suggested that other failure mecha-
nisms should be investigated.
One hypothesis was that the large vertical motions of the
Proceedings of the ASME 2013 32nd International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering
OMAE2013
June 9-14, 2013, Nantes, France
OMAE2013-11441
1 Copyright 2013 by ASME
FIGURE 1. ARTISTS IMPRESSION OF THE VOLVE FIELD.
TABLE 1. MAIN PARTICULARS OF NAVION SAGA.
Parameter Unit Value
Length over all, L
OA
m 269.00
Length between perpendiculars, L
PP
m 258.00
Breadth moulded, B m 46.00
Depth moulded, D m 23.90
Draught, T (design) m 16.86
Design deadweight t 149 000
wire socket, combined with low tension, could induce bending
stresses in the steel wire rope and lead to failure. This hypothesis
is investigated in the present paper. This paper starts by describ-
ing the numerical model of Navion Saga and its mooring sys-
tem. The strategy for analyzing the problem is then described,
followed by results from simulations and an explanation of the
possible failure mechanism. Analysis of a modied system is
presented, showing that bending of the steel wire rope segment
can be avoided by means of relatively simple modications to the
existing mooring system.
NUMERICAL MODEL
The analysis was performed using MARINTEKs modelling
and analysis workbench SIMA. The non-linear time domain -
nite element program RIFLEX was used to model the mooring
lines and the time domain simulation program for motions and
stationkeeping of multi-body systems SIMO to model the vessel
response. See http://www.marintek.no/Software/
Oil-and-Gas/ for further descriptions of the applied soft-
ware tools.
Finite Element Model of the Mooring Lines
The mooring system consists of 9 symmetrically spread
mooring lines attached to a turret 108.7 m in front of amidships.
In this analysis the turret was free to rotate and the mooring lines
were attached to the turret centre. Each mooring line consists
of 4 segments; lower chain segment, lower wire segment, upper
chain segment and upper wire segment, when listed from anchor
to fairlead (see Fig. 3). The upper chain segment has 12 (4 on
lines 8 and 9) clump weights evenly distributed on the upper part.
A nite element model of the mooring lines was prepared
in RIFLEX. The lower chain, lower wire and upper chain seg-
ments were modelled with bar elements, having axial stiffness,
but neither bending nor torsional stiffness. The upper wire seg-
ment was modelled using beam elements, where bending and
torsional stiffness is included. The upper chain and wire seg-
2 Copyright 2013 by ASME
FIGURE 2. OVERVIEW OF THE MOORING SYSTEM WITH THE LOCATIONS OF THE LINE BREAKS INDICATED.
ments are connected via a connecting link plate (see Fig. 4).
This was modelled as a cylinder with an equivalent diameter in
order to obtain correct weight in water, using bar elements. The
wire socket and the bending stiffener were modelled with beam
elements with bending stiffness ten times the bending stiffness of
the upper wire segment. The hinge joint between the link plate
and the wire socket was thus moment free.
Vertical seabed contact was modelled as a mass-spring-
damper system. The indentation of an element into the seabed
is based on equilibrium between the submerged weight of the el-
ement and the seabed stiffness. Usually, contact is checked by
comparing the vertical displacement of the nodes with the water
depth. This works ne for homogeneous mooring lines with con-
stant cross-sectional properties, but introduces numerical insta-
bilities for systems for large differences in the submerged weight
of the mooring line segments, as in our case with chain segments,
wire segments, sockets, clump weights and more. A contact ra-
dius on each cross-section was therefore applied to check for
seabed contact. This radius could be specied such that the nodes
aligned vertically. A signicant improvement of the numerical
stability was achieved.
The horizontal contact is specied by six parameters; a lin-
ear stiffness, a linear damping coefcient and a friction coef-
cient in axial and lateral directions. The contact force is modelled
as a spring force until the friction force is reached and frictional
sliding occurs. Axial and lateral contact behaviour is assumed
independent.
There are relatively large uncertainties associated with
seabed properties and how to model them. Some of these are
discussed later in the text.
Stability and Convergence of the Finite Element Model
A ne discretization of the upper wire segment was needed
in order to represent events with large curvature with sufcient
accuracy. The lowest 32 m of the upper wire segment were
modelled with 0.5 m long elements, while the next 60 m were
modelled with 1 m long elements. The short elements made it
necessary to simulate with a very short time step of 0.0025 s.
Both shorter and longer time steps were attempted, but 0.0025 s
was a reasonable trade-off between numerical stability and com-
putational time. Similar variations were performed for element
length.
With this choice of time step and element length, the model
was usually converging. However, some events with slack lines
still gave diverging results. The results were checked by vi-
sual inspection for divergence and divergent events had to be
excluded from the discussion.
3 Copyright 2013 by ASME
FIGURE 3. MOORING LINE COMPONENTS AND LOCATION OF FAILURE.
FIGURE 4. CONNECTION BETWEEN UPPER WIRE AND CHAIN SEGMENTS.
Vessel Model
A numerical model of the Navion Saga FSU from the orig-
inal design analysis was used with minor changes. The vessel
was modelled in Marinteks software SIMO and consisted of the
following components:
- First order wave to force transfer functions from the po-
tential theory code WAMIT (see http://www.wamit.
com).
- Added mass and damping coefcients from WAMIT con-
verted to retardation functions.
- Second order mean drift coefcients from WAMIT.
- Wave-drift damping estimated using Aranhas method [3].
- Wind and current coefcients taken from wind tunnel tests.
- Quadratic yaw damping and linear roll damping tuned to
model tests.
- Mooring line damping was not necessary to include in the
SIMO model, as this effect comes directly in coupled anal-
ysis (see below) due to full non-linear time domain nite
element analysis of the mooring lines simultaneously to the
numerical integration of the vessel dynamics.
- A constant thrust force was included in some simulations.
- Models for both ballast and loaded drafts were applied.
SIMULATIONS
The study was split into two parts; a screening phase and a
detailed analysis. The goal of the screening phase was to identify
interesting events with highly dynamic behaviour of the wire-
chain coupling, which would undergo a detailed analysis.
SIMO and RIFLEX were run simultaneously (so-called cou-
pled analysis) for a number of sea states and vessel congu-
rations with a simplied mooring line model in the screening
phase. Collinear wind, waves and current from 300

(clockwise
relative to North) were assumed, such that one of the broken lines
(line 4) was on the leeward side. A 100 year storm (100 years re-
turn period for wind and waves, combined with 10 years return
period for current) was used in the analysis, with three combi-
nations of signicant wave height (H
s
) and spectral peak period
(T
p
), see Table 2. The Torsethaugen spectrum [4] (double peaked
spectrum) was applied for the waves and the wind spectrum was
the one given in ISO 19901-1 [5]. The vessel response in these
three sea states were simulated for ballast and loaded drafts, and
4 Copyright 2013 by ASME
TABLE 2. ENVIRONMENTAL DATA USED IN THE SIMULA-
TIONS. SIGNIFICANT WAVE HEIGHT IS DENOTED BY H
s
, SPEC-
TRAL PEAK PERIOD BY T
p
, SURFACE CURRENT SPEED BY V
c
AND AVERAGE WIND SPEED BY V
w
.
H
s
[m] T
p
[s] V
c
[m/s] V
w
[m/s]
Environment 1 14.4 16.1 0.58 33.0
Environment 2 13.0 13.5 0.58 33.0
Environment 3 13.0 17.4 0.58 33.0
with and without constant thrust towards the weather direction.
Events with large differences in axial tension near the socket
of the upper wire segment of line 4 were identied from the
screening phase. These events were reanalysed with a detailed -
nite element model for a single mooring line (line 4). The vessel
response from the screening phase was imposed on the fairlead
node in the RIFLEX-model in order to drive the simulations.
RESULTS
The screening study showed that the response of the wire-
chain coupling was most violent with ballast draft, thrust towards
the weather and environment 1 (ref. Table 2). Some events from
this case were chosen based on visual inspection of the time se-
ries. Two of the events are indicated in Fig. 5, which shows time
histories of axial tension and vertical displacement for the upper
wire segment close to the socket.
Detailed analysis showed that these events induce a rela-
tively large curvature in the wire segment. The following para-
graphs describe the progress of such events and discuss the gov-
erning parameters, as well uncertainties in the numerical model.
Physical Phenomenon
The heavy coupling segments are lifted off the seabed at
events with high tension in leeward lines due to large forward
surge motion. The wire rope and the coupling segments fall to
the seabed with different speeds when the mooring line becomes
slack (surge motion in opposite direction). The free fall veloci-
ties (v) of wire, socket and connection plate can be calculated by
solving the following equation in v:
1
2
C
D
Dv
2
= (mA)g, (1)
where is the density of sea water, C
D
is dimensionless drag
coefcient, D is diameter, m is mass per unit length, A is cross-
sectional area and g is gravitational acceleration. This gives the
following free fall velocities:
- wire: 2.1 m/s,
- socket: 4.6 m/s,
- connection plate: 8.2 m/s.
Thus, the coupling segments are seen to fall at higher speed
than the wire. When the coupling segments hits the seabed, a
transverse wave/pulse (in the vertical mooring line plane) is
generated and propagates towards fairlead. See Figs. 6 and 7 for
illustrations of the phenomenon. The wave induces large curva-
ture in the upper wire segment and is damped out as the wire is
laid down on the seabed. The period of the wave is about 1 s.
Sensitivity Studies
A number of sensitivity studies have been performed in or-
der to nd the governing physical parameters as well as to check
if the failure mechanism persist within the range of uncertainty
for some of the parameters in the numerical model.
TABLE 3. RESULTS FROM SENSITIVITY STUDIES. CURVA-
TURE IS REPORTEDFROMTHE UPPERWIRE SEGMENT, CLOSE
TO THE SOCKET.
Curvature [m
1
]
Parameter Event 1 Event 2 Event 3
Drag coefcient

[-]:
1 0.28 0.24 0.28
2 0.27 0.22 0.24
3 0.22 0.18 0.22
Link plate rotation:
Rotation 0.27 0.22 0.24
No rotation 0.33 0.26 0.33
Bending stiffness [kNm
2
]:
2.1 0.29 0.27 0.29
5.0 0.21 0.17 0.20
9.9 0.16 0.12 0.15

Drag coefcient of link plate and socket.

5 Copyright 2013 by ASME
FIGURE 5. TIME SERIES OF TENSION AND VERTICAL DISPLACEMENT FOR THE UPPER WIRE SEGMENT CLOSE TO THE SOCKET.
FIGURE 6. SNAPSHOT (t = 7062.5 s) FROM THE VISUALIZATION OF AN EVENT. THE COLOR BAR INDICATES CURVATURE. NOTE
THAT THE LINK PLATE AND THE UPPER CHAIN SEGMENT ARE MODELLED WITH BAR ELEMENTS AND HAVE NO CURVATURE.
Seabed Properties The seabed at the Volve eld is ne homo-
geneous sand, with silty shell fragments. In RIFLEX, the seabed
was modelled relatively soft, such that quite large parts of the
mooring line will sink into the seabed. There are uncertainties
related to how seabed properties should be modelled for moor-
ing analyses, as the modelling options for seabed properties in
RIFLEX are simplied and there are no clear guidelines in stan-
dards.
Seabed stiffness was found to be important for the phe-
nomenon, while damping and friction had less inuence.
Drag Coefcients Drag coefcients for the link plate and the
wire socket are important as they will affect the free fall ve-
locities (see Eq. (1)). Table 3 indicates that the curvature will
decrease with increasing (normal) drag coefcient, as this will
reduce the difference between the free fall velocity of the wire
segment and the coupling element. The drag coefcient and the
diameter used for drag force calculations are assumed values and
associated with relatively large uncertainties.
Rotation of Link Plate Based on the inspection of one of the
broken lines there were indications that the connecting link plate
6 Copyright 2013 by ASME
FIGURE 7. SNAPSHOT (t = 7065.7 s) FROM THE VISUALIZATION OF AN EVENT. THE COLOR BAR INDICATES CURVATURE. NOTE
THAT THE LINK PLATE AND THE UPPER CHAIN SEGMENT ARE MODELLED WITH BAR ELEMENTS AND HAVE NO CURVATURE.
between the upper chain segment and the wire socket had rotated
90 degrees. The rotation around the hinge joint between the wire
socket and the link plate was restrained and the bending stiff-
ener, the socket and the connecting plate effectively acted as one
rigid body. This situation was modelled by considering the wire-
chain coupling (wire socket + connection plate) as one segment
with correct mass and length, but with equivalent diameter based
on the density of steel, with beam elements. This model was
compared with the original conguration. Table 3 shows that the
increase in curvature can be up to 40 % due to rotation of the
connection plate between the upper chain segment and the wire
socket. Rotation of the link plate should be therefore be avoided.
Use of Thrust Constant thrust towards the weather may have
had an adverse effect. While thrust towards the weather can be
an effective way of reducing the turret offset, it will also intro-
duce more events where the link plate is lifted of the seabed for
leeward lines.
Bending Stiffness Sensitivity with respect to the bending stiff-
ness of the upper wire segment was studied. Bending stiffnesses
of 5.0 and 9.9 kNm
2
were used, where the latter corresponds to
steel wire rope with sheating. The actual stiffness was 2.1 kNm
2
.
Table 3 shows a signicant decrease in curvature when the bend-
ing stiffness is increased.
Windward Lines
The screening study revealed that the coupling element on
all lines were lifted of the seabed. A windward line (line 8) was
therefore chosen for detailed study similar to the study of line
4. The curvature was found to be much more moderate for this
windward line than for the leeward line (line 4).
Stress Considerations
An upper limit for the bending stress induced by large cur-
vature can be estimated by assuming that the wires in the rope do
not move relative to each other. The bending stress is then

b
= E
d
2
, (2)
where E is the modulus of elasticity of the wire rope, is the
curvature and d is the diameter of the wire rope. With E = 155
GPa, = 0.3 m
1
and d = 0.107 m, this gives a bending stress
2488 MPa.
By assuming that all wires in the rope move freely relative to
each other, an estimate for the lower limit for the bending stress
is

b
= E
s

d
w
2
cos
2
, (3)
where E
s
= 210 GPa is the elastic modulus of steel, d
w
= 5
mm is the diameter of each of wires in the outer layer of the wire
7 Copyright 2013 by ASME
FIGURE 8. STATIC CONFIGURATION OF THE MODIFIED MOORING SYSTEM FOR BALLAST DRAFT.
rope and = 18

is the lay angle of the wires in the outer layer.

This gives a bending stress of 142 MPa.
The tensile strength for wires in the actual rope is about 2000
MPa. None of the calculations above give a correct stress level.
However, as the failure occurred close to the socket, the true
stress at this location is probably close to the upper limit calcu-
lated above. The stress calculations above are reasonable given
that the specied minimum bending radius of the wire rope is 2.5
m.
Modication of the mooring system
A modied version of the mooring system was studied. The
aim of the modication was to ensure that the coupling segments
never touch the seabed and thereby avoid any events with large
curvature in the upper wire segment. The length of the upper
chain segment was increased with 10 m, while the length of the
upper wire segment was reduced with 13 m. In addition, a buoy-
ancy element with a net buoyancy of 10 tons was attached to the
link plate. The modied system is shown in Fig. 8.
No contact between the seabed and the coupling segments
was found for the modied system.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
A possible failure mechanism for leeward mooring lines has
been studied. High curvature was induced by large vertical mo-
tions of the wire-chain coupling segments. The maximum cur-
vature was in the range of the specied capacity of the wire seg-
ment. Based on the sensitivity study, both seabed properties, drag
on the coupling segments and rotation of the coupling segments
affected the curvature of the wire rope during slack events. Even
though seabed properties and drag on coupling segments are as-
sociated with large uncertainties, the phenomenon causing large
curvature appeared for all combinations of parameters and with
similar magnitude of the curvature. The phenomenon is thus con-
sidered to be realistic.
Compression in wire rope may lead to buckling. This phe-
nomenon has not been modeled in this study. However, there are
indications that compression may occur during slack events.
Some simple countermeasures for design may be to ensure
that the coupling segments between upper wire segment and up-
per chain segment never touch the seabed, or that they are always
on the seabed. The former was studied and showed to have a sig-
nicant effect.
REFERENCES
[1] ISO, 2005. Petroleum and natural gas industries - Specic
requirements for offshore structures - Part 7: Stationkeeping
systems for oating offshore structures and mobile offshore
units. ISO 19901-7:2005.
[2] Det Norske Veritas. Offshore Standard: Position Mooring.
DNV-OS-E301. October 2010.
[3] Aranha, J., 1996. Second-order horizontal steady forces
and moment on a oating body with small forward speed.
Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 313, pp. 3954.
[4] Torsethaugen, K. Model for a doubly peaked wave spectrum.
SINTEF Report STF22 A96204.
8 Copyright 2013 by ASME
[5] ISO, 2005. Petroleum and natural gas industries - Specic
requirements for offshore structures - Part 1: Metocean de-
sign and operating considerations. ISO 19901-1:2005.
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