Mooring and anchoring systems for floating offshore renewable energy: seabed and embedded chain-anchor interactions and optimisations in sand

White, Dave, Kwa, Katherine, O’Loughlin, Conleth D., O'beirne, Colm and Cue, Joseph (2025) Mooring and anchoring systems for floating offshore renewable energy: seabed and embedded chain-anchor interactions and optimisations in sand. In 5th International Symposium on Frontiers in Offshore Geotechnics (ISFOG2025). 8 pp . (doi:10.53243/ISFOG2025-534).

Abstract

Chains or synthetic fibre ropes can be used as mooring lines for floating offshore renewable energy infrastructure. A new theoretical model for embedded mooring line-seabed interaction in sand, which uses cone penetration test tip resistance as input, has been developed to estimate the embedded mooring-line shape and tensioning response. This study presents the calibrated embedded mooring line-seabed interaction model and uses this theoretical model to investigate the influence of embedded mooring-line size on the tensioning response and direction of loading at the anchor padeye for different sand densities. A range of mooring lines including chains of different thicknesses and minimum breaking strengths, and a synthetic fibre rope, connected to an anchor and embedded in loose and dense sand are simulated. The study demonstrates that thinner chains with smaller bar diameters cut more into the looser sand than thicker chains, and quantifies the more favourable flatter orientation of loading at the anchor padeye. This leads to higher horizontal anchor capacity and more efficient embedded mooring-line-anchor systems. The simulation approach is also compared to small-scale model experimental results.

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Contributors

Author: Dave White

Author: Katherine Kwa

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