Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Prepared by
and
1201 Western Avenue, Suite 200, Seattle, Washington 98101-2921 TEL 206.624.7850 FAX 206.682.9117 www.glosten.com
Prepared by
Coastwise Corporation
Anchorage, Alaska
and
Digitally signed by
PREPARED: Katherine V. Sultani-Wright
Katherine V. Sultani-Wright, PE Digitally Signed
12-Jul-2011
Project Manager
CHECKED:
David L. Gray, PE
Senior Principal
1201 Western Avenue, Suite 200, Seattle, Washington 98101-2921 TEL 206.624.7850 FAX 206.682.9117 www.glosten.com
Contents
Executive Summary.................................................................................................... i
Section 1 Background and Location ..................................................................... 1
Section 2 Climatology ............................................................................................ 3
2.1 Technical Approach ...................................................................................................... 3
2.2 Local Winds .................................................................................................................. 3
2.2.1 Design Wind: 100-Year Return Period Local Wind ............................................. 4
2.3 Local Current ................................................................................................................ 6
2.3.1 Design Current ...................................................................................................... 6
2.4 Local Waves ................................................................................................................. 6
2.4.1 Description of SWAN ........................................................................................... 7
2.4.2 Bering Sea Waves ................................................................................................. 8
2.4.3 Design Waves: 100-Year Return Period Local Waves ....................................... 12
2.5 Metocean Design Climatology ................................................................................... 16
Section 3 Design Vessel ....................................................................................... 17
3.1 Environmental Loads .................................................................................................. 18
3.1.1 Wind Forces ........................................................................................................ 19
3.1.2 Current Forces ..................................................................................................... 19
3.1.3 Wave Forces ........................................................................................................ 20
Section 4 Governing Regulations........................................................................ 21
Section 5 Concept Mooring Buoy Design ........................................................... 23
5.1 Overview .................................................................................................................... 23
5.2 Mooring Components ................................................................................................. 23
5.2.1 Buoy .................................................................................................................... 24
5.2.2 Mooring Lines ..................................................................................................... 25
5.2.3 Anchors ............................................................................................................... 25
5.2.4 Vessel Connection ............................................................................................... 27
5.3 Mooring Analysis ....................................................................................................... 28
Section 6 Cost Estimate ....................................................................................... 32
Section 7 Recommendations ............................................................................... 33
Appendix A Annual Extreme Winds
Appendix B SWAN Analysis Results
Terms
AIRA Aleutian Islands Risk Assessment
ABS American Bureau of Shipping
ADEC Alaska Department of Environmental Conservatism
AIS Automatic Identification System
API American Petroleum Institute
CFR Code of Federal Regulations
FPI Floating Production Installation
IACS International Association of Classification Societies
GROW Global Reanalysis of Ocean Waves
Gumbel extreme value probability A statistical probability distribution used to forecast further extremes
distribution based on observed extremes
JONSWAP Joint North Sea Wave Project
Metocean An abbreviation of the two words "Meteorology" and "Oceanography."
The term is often used in the offshore industry to describe the physical
environment.
MODU Mobile Offshore Drilling Units
NDBC National Data Buoy Center
NPD Norwegian Petroleum Directorate
OCIMF Oil Companies International Marine Forum
OrcaFlex A time-domain dynamic analysis code that includes the effects of
unsteady wind, first-order wave excitation, second-order wave drift,
current, and nonlinear mooring forces on floating bodies
ORQ Oil Rig Quality
PPOR Potential Place of Refuge
QTF Quadratic Transfer Functions
ROV Remotely Operated Vehicle
SPM Single Point Mooring
SWAN Simulating Waves Nearshore; a wave generation and propagation model
that can be used to derive the wave conditions in a nearshore area
USCG United States Coast Guard
WAMIT Wave Analysis MIT; a 3D frequency-domain radiation-diffraction panel
program for analyzing the interaction of surface waves with offshore
structures
WBAN Weather-Bureau-Army-Navy
Climatology
This report presents a climatological study to select design environmental conditions for the
mooring within Unalaska Bay. The design climatology represents a severe storm that is
expected once every 100 years. The resulting local wave heights are 4-5 m, depending on the
wind direction. Wind speed is approximately 60 knots. Current is about 1.5 knots and is
always aligned with the wind, as tidal currents are negligible in the area.
Vessel Selection
The selection of the design vessel is based on limited information about recent vessel
casualties near Dutch Harbor; it is not based on a comprehensive vessel traffic study, which
was not in the scope of the concept study. The design vessel used to size the mooring
components consists of an underwater hull form similar to a tanker or bulk carrier, and an
above water hull form similar to a car carrier. It is 206 m in length and 32.4 m in breadth, with
a displacement of 64,387 tonnes.
Mooring Design
A three (3) leg, twin line mooring
configuration was selected for the
concept design based on common
Navy fleet moorings. A sketch of
the concept design is shown in
Figure 1.
Anchor Selection
An 18 tonne Bruce TS anchor is Figure 1 Concept design of mooring buoy for disabled
needed to develop the required holding vessels in Broad Bay, Alaska
capacity of 700 kips. The four (4) existing 15 tonne Bruce TS anchors do not provide enough
holding capacity on an individual basis for the configuration shown in Figure 1, assuming soft
bottom conditions. Variations from the assumed bottom conditions or other design
assumptions could have a significant impact on cost and design of the mooring system.
Cost Estimate
The total cost of installing this system with an ABS classification is estimated at $10.5 million,
with an annual inspection cost of $250,000 excluding hardware replacement.
1
http://www.aleutiansriskassessment.com/
The joint probability distribution of wind speed and direction at the Dutch Harbor Airport is
shown in Figure 4.
Gumbel extreme value probability distributions were fit to all nine sets of data. Figures
showing extrapolation are shown in Appendix A. A summary of the 100-year return
extrapolation for all eight (8) directional sectors is presented in Table 3. The wind speeds in
the table are the expected value one-minute average wind speed at 4 m.
Table 3 Summary of 100-year return one-minute average wind speeds at 4 m based on Dutch Harbor
Airport data, knots
U(4.0 m, 60 sec), knots N NE E SE S SW W NW ALL
Expected Value 54 46 61 60 69 60 57 61 66
The one-hour average wind speeds are used in the SWAN wave hindcast and the OrcaFlex
mooring analysis. Therefore, it was necessary to convert from one-minute averages to one-
hour averages. According to the recommendations in the API RP2SK-Appendix B, the
Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) wind spectrum was assumed (Reference 7).
The method in Reference 7 was used to obtain U0, the one-hour average wind speed at an
elevation of 10 meters, as a function of direction based on the expected value of the one-
minute average wind speeds at 4 m elevation. If the expected value for a directional sector fell
below the expected value for all directions, the expected value for all directions was used;
otherwise the expected value for the directional sector was used. This procedure was used as
an attempt to reduce the effects of local topography on the wind speed data.
The results of the transformation of one-minute average wind speeds at 4 m elevation to one-
hour average wind speeds at 10 m are shown in Table 4.
Table 4 Transformation from one-minute average to one-hour average 100-year return period wind
speeds using NPD Spectrum wind gust formulation
One-minute average wind speed One-hour average wind speed at
at 4 m, knots 10 m, knots
Wind Heading, deg true U(4 m, 60 sec) U(10 m, 3600 sec)
0/360 66 58
45 66 58
90 66 58
135 66 58
SWAN explicitly includes the effects of non-linear four wave interactions (quadruplets) and
three wave interactions (triads). The discrete representation of the frequency spectrum means
that SWAN is more suitable than previous models for application in areas where strong growth
due to wind action may occur and where the remains of old sea states or swell is also present
(e.g., behind island barriers or bank systems).
SWAN calculates the wave field on a two dimensional horizontal rectangular grid covering the
computational area. At each grid point, SWAN represents the complete 2D-action density
spectrum discretely as a function of frequency and direction. SWAN calculates wave
propagation in all directions. The solution technique marches forward row by row over the
grid beginning at the incident wave boundary, where the incident wave characteristics are
defined. The results in each direction sector at each grid point are computed from the results
for the grid points in the previous row. The propagation of energy is modeled using an energy
balance equation adapted to include terms for wave growth by wind action or dissipation due
to bottom friction or wave breaking.
SWAN has been verified using results both from field measurements and from physical model
tests. The SWAN program can be obtained from the internet site of Delft University of
Technology, see http://fluidmechanics.tudelft.nl/ (Reference 2).
Figure 5 Offshore wave data buoys (46035 and 43073) in relation to Dutch Harbor
Despite the fact that buoy 46073 is closer to Dutch Harbor, buoy 46035 was selected to
characterize the Bering Sea waves because it had a longer time record of wave data. However,
for the years that data was available for 46073, those data points were used instead of those
from 46035. Due to the geography of Unalaska Bay, Bering Sea waves approaching from the
northeast sector have an unobstructed path into Broad Bay. Therefore, only Bering Sea waves
from a sector defined by 15 deg true and 75 deg true were considered in developing the 100-
year return period design climatology. This is shown in Figure 6.
These annual extremes over twenty-six years of record were used as a basis for a Gumbel
extrapolation of the extreme significant wave height expected in one hundred years of record,
as shown in Figure 7. Not all of the annual extremes were used in the extrapolation; the data
set was chosen to maximize the goodness-of-fit of the extrapolation to the upper end of the
data. The resulting estimate of the expected 100-year return Bering Sea significant wave
height from the northeast sector was 14.5 meters.
16
Significant Wave Height, meters
14
12
10
9
Upper 90% Prediction Bound and
8 Lower 90% Prediction Bound shown
as dashed lines about Expected Value.
7
5
0.001 0.01 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.8 0.9 0.95 0.98 0.99 0.995 0.998 0.999
Cumulative Probability
Figure 7 Extrapolation of 100-year return Bering Sea significant wave height for waves arriving from
the northeast sector
The peak period associated with the 100-year return Bering Sea significant wave height was
determined according to the method shown in Figure 8. A line of best-fit constant wave
steepness was calculated for the 26 extreme combined significant wave height dominant
period points. The dominant period for the 100-year return Bering Sea significant wave height
was selected based on the line of constant wave steepness, and was determined to be 16.5
seconds.
18
Tp = 16.5 sec
16
14
Dominant Period (Tp), sec
12
Hs = 14.5 m
10 Hs/gTp2 =0.00543
Hs/gTp2 =0.00539
6
Figure 8 Conditional peak period expected in association with 100-year return Bering Sea significant
wave height for waves arriving from the northeast sector
Eight cases were modeled using SWAN. A summary of these eight (8) cases is shown in
Table 7. A heading of 0 degrees corresponds to a wind or wave coming from true north, a
heading of 180 degrees corresponds to a wind or wave coming from true south. Each case
corresponds to local wind from all directions at 45 degree increments and Bering Sea waves
from 45 degrees. A sensitivity study was conducted to find the angle of Bering Sea waves that
maximized the waves at the proposed mooring buoy site. It was concluded that Bering Sea
waves coming into the bay at a 45 degree heading produced the largest waves at the mooring
site.
Table 8 shows a summary of the local waves at the proposed mooring buoy site as predicted
by SWAN. The full set of SWAN results is presented in Appendix B.
Figure 11 Serenity Ace, a similar vessel to the Cougar Ace, which has a large windage area
Figure 12 Selendang Ayu, which has a small windage area, but a deeper draft (see Table 10)
A composite vessel was created based on the underwater area of the bulk carrier and the
superstructure of the car carrier. This composite vessel captures the effects of a deeper draft
and a large windage area. For a concept level mooring buoy design, this composite vessel is
considered appropriate. The particulars of the design vessel are shown in Table 11.
2
Reference 14 analyzed nine months of data (October 1, 2005 through June 30, 2006) from the automated
identification system (AIS) installed at Scotch Cap, Unimak Pass. AIS data information for each vessel detected
provides the vessel name, vessel type, next and last port, and call-sign. Vessel identification information can be
cross-referenced with the Lloyds Register database to identify vessel size.
A vessel of this size (~55,000 DWT) matches the capability of the Emergency Towing System
in Dutch Harbor. The City of Unalaska has purchased a system suitable for vessels up to
50,000 DWT, and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation is purchasing a
system capable of towing vessels greater than 50,000 DWT according to Reference 15.
The design vessel selected does not represent the largest known Panamax vessel or account for
future vessel traffic trends. New Panamax size vessels are expected to transit Unimak Pass
when the Panama Canals Third Set of Locks Project is complete and open for vessel traffic.
Table 12 below provides a comparison between notional Panamax and New Panamax vessel
characteristics.
Table 12 Panamax vs. New Panamax vessel size
Freeboard
Displacement at
Vessel Maximum at Maximum Maximum
Type Nominal Capacity LOA Beam Depth Draft Draft Draft
m m m m tonnes m
Panamax:
Container 4,000-5,000 TEU 294 32.2 22.6 13.3 80,000 9.3
Tanker 75,000 DWT 230 32.26 20.7 14.6 90,000 6.1
New Panamax:
Container 12,000 TEU 366 49 27.9 15.2 160,000 12.7
Tanker 145,000 DWT 274 48 24.4 15.2 165,000 9.2
The following regulations and industry standards related to single point moorings should be
considered in subsequent design and development.
1) American Bureau of Shipping:
a. ABS Rules for Building and Classing Single Point Moorings, 1996.
As noted above these rules form the design basis for the concept in this report. The
Single Point Mooring (SPM) rules were developed around CALM buoy type
installations where product is loaded through a riser and floating hose. The safety
factors are set so that a fatigue analysis is not required.
b. ABS Guide for Building and Classing Floating Production Installations, November
2010. This guide provides an alternative classification path for SPMs with lower
safety factors, but more rigorous analysis requirements. A fatigue analysis is required.
The guide generally follows and references API RP 2SK.
c. ABS Guide for the Mooring of Oil Carriers at Single Point Moorings, December 2010.
The mooring design should accommodate vessels fitted for standard SPM equipment
identified in this guide. The guide contains the following description of its purpose:
This Guide has been developed in response to industry requests for an
optional ABS Class notation to address arrangements where an Oil Carrier is
fitted with equipment enabling it to be moored to single point moorings.
d. ABS Guidance Notes on the Application of Synthetic Ropes for Offshore Mooring,
March 1999. This guide applies to the hawser.
e. ABS Guide of the Certification of Offshore Mooring Chain, December 2009.
Ground Ring
Anchor Leg
Drag Anchor
100 m
W E
45 deg
5.2.1 Buoy
A foam-filled mooring buoy fitted with a through-chain hawse pipe and capture plate provides
a net buoyancy of 45 tonnes. This design assumes a Trelleborg MB-45000 mooring buoy with
an overall diameter of 4.2 meters and a height of 4.1 meters (excluding hawse pipe and
hardware). The buoy has a nylon filament reinforced polyurethane skin which has excellent
resistance to water, oil, ice, strong sunlight, and abrasive surfaces. It remains flexible even at -
40C (-40F) making it suitable for Arctic installations. Lighting to suit USCG aids to
navigation requirements and a chafing guard will be required accessories. In the 100-year
storm event the buoy will fully submerge. Several vendors offer equivalent mooring buoys.
Figure 18 illustrates the buoy construction; however, the internal core in the figure would be
replaced with a hawse pipe.
5.2.3 Anchors
The composition of the seafloor at the mooring site is presently unknown, so proper selection
of anchors is not possible at this stage of design. For the concept design, drag-embedment
anchors were selected based on the assumption of a mud seafloor.
Preliminary analysis showed that the highest tension in any of the anchor legs is 1526 kN (343
kips). According to the guidance in Reference 12, the minimum factor of safety on anchor
holding capacity is 2.00. Therefore, the anchors must have a minimum holding capacity of
3051 kN (686 kips). Assuming a minimum holding capacity of 700 kips, the anchor sizes
shown in Table 15 are possibilities. The anchor types were selected based on Reference 7.
ADEC indicated that four Bruce TS anchors weighing 15 tonnes are available for purchase in
Alaska. These anchors are not quite large enough to develop the required holding power and
safety factor for the mooring design. An 18 tonne Bruce TS anchor is required as shown in
Table 15. If the anchors can be obtained at a substantial discount (i.e. less than half the cost
for a new anchor of the required size), then they could be utilized in tandem on two of the six
legs. Additional anchors for the remaining four legs would be required from another source.
We do not recommend purchasing anchors until a bottom survey is complete. The anchor
selection will need to be revisited in the next design phase after bottom surveys are complete.
The concept mooring buoy design incorporates drag-embedment anchors. However, pile-
driven plate anchors are another option that may be considered. Driven plate anchors must be
designed for the site-specific soil conditions. Since these are presently unknown, a plate
anchor design was not pursued. Design features of both types of anchors are presented in
Table 16 (Reference 11).
The chafing chain is 76 mm ORQ stud-link chain and the hawser is 144 mm nylon double
braid. Complete specifications of the vessel connection hardware remain to be developed.
Figure 19 Typical arrangement to facilitate connection of vessel to mooring buoy (adapted from
Reference 13)
L0
N
L01
W E
L21
L1
L2
L11
The maximum tension in the riser chain was 2607 kN, which yields a safety factor of 3.13 on
breaking strength.
In addition to line tension, the suspended length of each anchor leg was examined to ensure
that the drag anchors did not experience any uplift forces. This was shown to be the case and
the full set of results is shown in Table 18.
3
GROW couples Oceanweather's global wave model, tropical boundary layer model, and its experience in
developing marine surface wind fields to produce a global wave hindcast. The result is a long term analysis of
the global wave climate which can be applied to offshore structure design, tow-analysis, operability, and other
applications where wind and wave data are required. The analysis can be sampled for project specific sites to
estimate local design conditions
4
It should be noted that this differs from a 90% prediction interval. A 90% prediction interval is based on a two-
sided probability distribution. So, there is a 5% chance that a value of the process exceeds the upper limit of the
90% prediction interval, and there is a 5% chance that a value of the process falls below the lower limit of the
90% prediction interval.
80
70
One-minute average wind speed, knots
60
50
40
Upper 90% Prediction Bound and
Lower 90% Prediction Bound shown
as dashed lines about Expected Value.
30
0.001 0.01 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.8 0.9 0.95 0.98 0.99 0.995 0.998 0.999
Cumulative Probability
80
70
One-minute average wind speed, knots
60
50
40
30
Upper 90% Prediction Bound and
Lower 90% Prediction Bound shown
as dashed lines about Expected Value.
0.001 0.01 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.8 0.9 0.95 0.98 0.99 0.995 0.998 0.999
Cumulative Probability
80
70
One-minute average wind speed, knots
60
50
40
Upper 90% Prediction Bound and
Lower 90% Prediction Bound shown
as dashed lines about Expected Value.
30
0.001 0.01 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.8 0.9 0.95 0.98 0.99 0.995 0.998 0.999
Cumulative Probability
80
70
One-minute average wind speed, knots
60
50
40
Upper 90% Prediction Bound and
Lower 90% Prediction Bound shown
as dashed lines about Expected Value.
30
0.001 0.01 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.8 0.9 0.95 0.98 0.99 0.995 0.998 0.999
Cumulative Probability
80
70
One-minute average wind speed, knots
60
50
40
Upper 90% Prediction Bound and
Lower 90% Prediction Bound shown
as dashed lines about Expected Value.
30
0.001 0.01 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.8 0.9 0.95 0.98 0.99 0.995 0.998 0.999
Cumulative Probability
80
70
One-minute average wind speed, knots
60
50
40
Upper 90% Prediction Bound and
Lower 90% Prediction Bound shown
as dashed lines about Expected Value.
30
0.001 0.01 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.8 0.9 0.95 0.98 0.99 0.995 0.998 0.999
Cumulative Probability
80
70
One-minute average wind speed, knots
60
50
40
Upper 90% Prediction Bound and
Lower 90% Prediction Bound shown
as dashed lines about Expected Value.
30
0.001 0.01 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.8 0.9 0.95 0.98 0.99 0.995 0.998 0.999
Cumulative Probability
80
70
One-minute average wind speed, knots
60
50
40
Upper 90% Prediction Bound and
Lower 90% Prediction Bound shown
as dashed lines about Expected Value.
30
0.001 0.01 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.8 0.9 0.95 0.98 0.99 0.995 0.998 0.999
Cumulative Probability
80
70
One-minute average wind speed, knots
60
50
40
Upper 90% Prediction Bound and
Lower 90% Prediction Bound shown
as dashed lines about Expected Value.
30
0.001 0.01 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.8 0.9 0.95 0.98 0.99 0.995 0.998 0.999
Cumulative Probability