Space@Sea floater technical developments
Ingo Drummen, Gerrit Olbert & Martijn Breuls
The design of modular floating multi-purpose island inherently involves interaction within a group with a large range of backgrounds such an engineering, architecture, sociology, climate modelling and more. A heuristic design approach was adopted in Space@Sea for future island developers to make a first conceptual design. Four major design considerations were distinguished: module size, module shape, module principle, module connection and module mooring. For each consideration a set of evaluation criteria were defined. This paper describes the heuristic conceptual design procedure that was applied. As a result of the design process, a barge-like, square structure with a base size of 45m was chosen as the base module for the Space@Sea concept.
Following the conceptual design, a detailed design of the modules and their configuration was done. The design for the connector was divided into a relatively rigid and flexible connection. A rigid connector will result in lower relative motions, but higher forces than a flexible connection. Depending on the application one of the two connections will be most suitable. In this paper two geographical locations were assessed to evaluate a relative 100-year ultimate limit state environment. For the rigid connection it was concluded that moments occurring in the currently designed connector will be very challenging. Consequently, the connector can only be used under limited and benign conditions. Future work should include a more rigid connection that can have more widespread use. The flexible connector shows more promising results. It is found to be functioning within the assumed limits and to be an appropriate method of connecting the modules
KEYWORDS: floating multi-purpose island, heuristic design, detailed design, connector design
Dr.ir. Ingo Drummen obtained his MSc degree with honours in Offshore Technology from the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. In 2008 he successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Nonlinear Wave-Induced Load Effects in Containerships Considering Hydroelasticity”. The focus of the work was on the contribution of hull flexibility to fatigue and extreme load effects. Since 2007 Ingo Drummen is employed at MARIN where he now has the position of Senior Project Manager in the hydrostructural services team. In this function he led the fourth work package of the space@sea project. The objective of this work package was to design an optimized standard modular concept for a floating island and to determine the limiting criteria under which different setups of these modules can be used.