Analysis and application of mooring system based on virtual prototype technology

A simulation method for dynamic response analysis of mooring system based on virtual prototype technology is presented according to its characteristics of multisystem coupling and nonlinearity. Anchor chain is regarded as catenary to get the initial conditions of mooring system through its static analysis. According to the dynamic analysis of mooring system, we apply Morrison equations to simplify the mathematic analysis model of mooring system, and solve it using perturbation method. Mooring system fits a nonlinear system according to the experiment data in different conditions, and is simplified to nonlinear spring constraints to construct a virtual prototype model of offshore platform in ADAMS software. Its feasibility of dynamic analysis based on virtual prototype technology is demonstrated by an application example showing the simulation analysis of grab dredger. The simulation results show that the simplified model of mooring system provides a reliable analysis platform for the virtual simulation of offshore platform, and decrease its analysis complexity of the theory research on dynamic performance.