Title: Development of a concept of mono-column platform: MONOBR

Authors: Isaias Quaresma Masetti; Ana Paula dos Santos Costa; Sergio Hamilton Sphaier; Kazuo Nishimoto; Gerson Machado

Addresses: CENPES/Petrobras, Brazil. ' CENPES/Petrobras, Brazil. ' COPPE/UFRJ, Ocean Engineering Program, Graduate School of Engineering, Rio de Jeneiro, Brazil. ' DENO/USP, Brazil. ' Sólido Engenharia, Brazil

Abstract: Over the past few years oil exploitation evolved to deep waters extraction, locations in which oil transport through pipeline systems becomes an unreasonable solution. Solutions based on ships or barges, which allow the storage of oil and its transfer to shuttle tankers, were considered as an advantageous alternative and were widely used. However, these platforms present excessive and undesirable motion for a rigid or even a flexible riser. Furthermore, the recent series of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico resulted in strong damages to many installed platforms. These occurrences and climate changes in several areas, all over the world, are a strong motivation for the development of new concepts and new criteria for offshore platforms. New platform concepts, with hulls similar to cylinder trunks and/or cones with shallow drafts, were proposed to the technical community, the goals of which were to respond to small motion in waves. This paper focuses on the study of the motions in waves of the Brazilian conception, MONOBR and its use exposed to severe environmental conditions. Experimental results obtained on the LabOceano (COPPE/UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro) developed in the past few years are presented.

Keywords: BUOYFORM; MONOBR; mono-column platforms; offshore platforms; offshore oil industry; wave motion; Brazil; hull design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2012.046309

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2012 Vol.43 No.3, pp.225 - 233

Published online: 03 Apr 2012 *

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