The 9th Asian Conference on Multibody Dynamics

August 19 - 23, 2018, Xi’an, China

Modeling of a Mooring System Based on Flexible Multibody Dynamics

Considering Contact with Seabed
Hye-Won Lee1, Myung-Il Roh2, Seung-Ho Ham3
1Department 2Department
of Naval Architecture and of the Naval Architecture
Ocean Engineering, and Ocean Engineering, and Research
Seoul National University, Institute of Marine Systems
1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, 08826, Seoul, Engineering, Seoul National University,
Republic of Korea 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, 08826,
gpdnjs0215@snu.ac.kr Seoul, Republic of Korea
miroh@snu.ac.kr
3Department of Naval Architecture and
Ocean Engineering,
Seoul National University,
1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, 08826, Seoul,
Republic of Korea
hsh0930@snu.ac.kr

Abstract
The mooring system is a system including mooring line, anchor, and connectors which are used to keep the
position of ships or floating platforms under environmental loads. The mooring line connects a floating platform
to the anchor on the seabed. In ship and ocean engineering field, the dynamic analysis of the floating platform has
been performed using multibody dynamics. However, in the existing researches, the mooring line was simply
modeled as a linear spring, and the analytic solution was used for quasi-static analysis. For the dynamic analysis,
the FEM (Finite Element Method) based mooring line can be used for the mooring system. However, it has been
applied to a single floating body, not for the multibody system.
In this study, the dynamic motion of the mooring system connected to the multibody system is analyzed using
flexible multibody dynamics. The mooring line is modeled with flexible beam elements using the absolute nodal
coordinate formulation (ANCF) [1, 2] and the cubic Hermite shape function. For the equations of motion of the
multibody system, we adopted the discrete Euler-Lagrange (DEL) equation derived by Lacoursière [3]. The final
form of the DEL equation is shown in Eq. (1).

M G Tk   q k 1  M  2q k  q k 1   h 2 F  q k , q k 1  
    (1)
G k    h 2 λ k   g  q k   G k q k 

Generally, to realize the contact between the mooring line and the seabed, the linear springs are used which
connect each node of the mooring line and the seabed. However, it is not appropriate for the element using 3rd
order shape function. Therefore, in this study, the non-interpenetration constraint and the slope constraint at the
nodes are formulated. The constraint equations are shown in Eq. (2).


g1  E R B B n S( )q A   E rB  E R B B rC   0  (2)
g 2  S q E n  0

Moreover, to consider the friction between the mooring line and the seabed, the modified Coulomb friction
model which can realize the stick condition is adopted. For the environmental load exerted on the mooring line
such as current force, Morison’s equation shown in Eq. (3) is adopted. Both the added mass and drag forces are
considered, and the calculated current force is integrated along the mooring line using the shape function of the
beam element.

1
F  Vu  CaV (u  v)  Cd A(u  v) u  v (3)
2

With the suggested mooring line model, the mooring analysis during the lifting operation of the floating crane
is performed as shown in Figure 2. The block is lifted by the floating crane with wire rope, hook, and equalizers.
For the environmental loads, the irregular wave and the current are considered. As a result, it can be seen that this
approach can be used for the accurate mooring analysis of the multibody system.

Figure 1 Simulation results of a lifting operation of a floating crane

Acknowledgments
This work was partially supported by
a) BK21 Plus, Education & Research Center for Offshore Plant Engineers (COPE) of Seoul National
University, Republic of Korea,
b) Program of University Specialized for Offshore Plant Engineering funded by the Ministry of Trade,
Industry and Energy, Republic of Korea, and
c) Research Institute of Marine Systems Engineering of Seoul National University, Republic of Korea.

References
[1] M. Berzeri, A. A. Shabana, Development of Simple Models for the Elastic Forces in the Absolute Nodal
Coordinate Formulation, Journal of Sound and Vibration, 235(4):239-565, 2000.
[2] A. A. Shabana, Dynamics of multibody systems, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2005.
[3] C. Lacoursière, Ghosts and machines: regularized variational methods for interactive simulations of
multibodies with dry frictional contacts. Ph. D. Thesis. Umea University, Sweden, 2007.