CYBERLAB - Shared Mooring Systems

CYBERLAB investigates the dynamic behaviour of wind parks with shared mooring systems,. In such systems, a set of platforms (here 9 semi-submersibles) are interconnected, and only some of them anchored to the sea bed. Given the massive upscaling of floating wind in the years to come, shared mooring systems are of interest as the required number of anchors per platform is significantly reduced (by a factor of 2-3). The cumulated length of the mooring lines is also reduced, particularly in deep water. However, designing shared mooring systems differs significantly from current mooring design procedures: governing load cases, failure modes, static and dynamic loads in mooring lines, installation/maintenance procedures are, for example, radically different. The CYBERLAB project focuses on the in-place dynamic behaviour of such systems, when exposed to hydrodynamic loads. Both theoretical and experimental methods are used. To be able to test such shared mooring systems in a hydrodynamic laboratory, a cyber-physical approach is proposed, where only one floater is modelled physically, interacting in real-time with the remaining ones, which are modelled numerically. The presentation will present the research questions addressed by the project, the various tools and methods applied, and a brief account of the knowledge gained so far will be given.