This study evaluated the Hook-up installation of an offshore site construction process, which is the final step in an offshore site installation process. During Hook-up installation, the offshore structure can have a detrimental effect on the work stability due to low-frequency motion. Moreover, economic costs can be incurred by the increase in available days of a tugboat. Therefore, this study developed a numerical analysis program to assess the dynamic behavior of mooring systems during hook-up installation to analyze the generally performed installation process and determine when the tugboat should be released. In this program, the behavior of an offshore structure was calculated using Cummin's time-domain motion equation, and the mooring system was calculated by Lumped mass method (LMM). In addition, a tugboat algorithm for hook-up installation was developed to apply the Hook-up procedure. The model used in the calculations was the barge type assuming FPSO (Floating production storage and off-loading) and has a taut mooring system connected to 16 mooring lines. The results of the simulation were verified by comparing with both MOSES, which is a commercial program, and a calculation method for restoring coefficient matrix, which was introduced by Patel and Lynch (1982). Finally, the offset of the structure according to the number of tugboats was calculated using the hook-up simulation, and the significant value was used to represent the calculation result.

This study discusses data collection, calculation of wind and wave-induced resistance, and speed-power analysis of an 8,600 TEU container ship. Data acquisition system of the ship operator was improved to obtain the data necessary for the analysis, which was accomplished using SPA (Ship Performance Analysis, Park et al., 2019) in conformation with ISO15016:2015. From a previous operation profile of the container, the standard operating conditions of mean draft were 12.5 m and 13.6 m, which were defined with the mean stowage configuration of each condition. Model tests, including the load-variation test, were conducted to validate new ship performance and for the speed-power analysis. The major part of the added resistance of container ship is due to the wind. To check the reliability of wind-resistance calculation results, the resistance coefficients, added resistance, and speed-power analysis results using the Fujiwara regression formula (ISO15016:2015) and Computational fluid dynamics (Ryu et al., 2016; Jeon et al., 2017) analysis were compared. Wind speed and direction measured using an anemometer were used for wind-resistance calculation and the wave resistance was calculated using the wave-height and direction-data from weather information. Also, measured water temperature was used to calculate the increase in resistance owing to the deviation in water density. As a result, the SPA analysis using measured data and weather information was proved to be valid and able to identify the ship's resistance propulsion performance. Even with little difference in the air-resistance coefficient value, both methods provide sufficient accuracy for speed-power analysis. The differences were unnoticeable when the speed-power analysis results using each method were compared. Also, speed-power analysis results of the 8,600 TEU container ship in two draft conditions show acceptable trends when compared with the model test results and are also able to show power increase owing to hull fouling and aging. Thus, results of speed-power analysis of the existing 8,600 TEU container ship using the SPA program appropriately exhibit the characteristics of speed-power performance in deal conditions.

The main features of offshore turret platforms are station-keeping and weathervaning functions. Due to the complexity of the yaw motion, abundant research is being done to verify the factors that affect the heading stability. Simulations are used for studies that are not possible with experiments, but the conditions must be verified using experimental results. This study presents methods to estimate turret-related parameters such as the rotational stiffness and rotational damping. A time series analysis was performed, and the results showed that the calculation using the obtained parameters agreed well with experimental results.

This paper presents comparative studies of reliability analysis and meta-modeling using the sampling method of Monte Carlo simulation for the structure design of an automatic ocean salt collector (AOSC). The thickness sizing variables of structure members are considered as random variables. Probabilistic performance functions are selected from strength performances evaluated via the finite element analysis of an AOSC. The sampling methods used in the comparative studies are simple random sampling and Sobol sequences with varied numbers of sampling. Approximation methods such as the Kriging model is applied to the meta-model generation. Reliability performances such as the probability failure and distribution are compared based on the variation of the sampling method of Monte Carlo simulation. The meta-modeling accuracy is evaluated for the Kriging model generated from the Monte Carlo simulation and Sobol sequence results. It is discovered that the Sobol sequence method is applicable to not only to the reliability analysis for the structural design of marine equipment such as the AOSC, but also to Kriging meta-modeling owing to its high numerical efficiency.

As regulations concerning ship vibration and noise are becoming stricter, considerable attention is being drawn to prediction technologies for ship vibration and noise. In particular, the resonance and lock-in phenomena caused by vortex-induced vibration (VIV) have become considerably important with increases in the speed and the size of ships and ocean structures, which are known to cause structural problems. This study extends the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analysis method to predict resonances and lock-in phenomena of high modes and VIV of ship rudders. Numerical stability is secured in underwater conditions by implementing added mass, added damping, and added stiffness by applying the potential theory to structural analysis. An expanded governing equation is developed by implementing displacements and twist angles of high modes. The lock-in velocity range and resonant frequencies of ship rudders obtained using the developed FSI method agree well with the experimental results and the analytic solution. A comparison with local vibration guidelines published by Lloyd's Register shows that predictions of resonances and lock-in phenomena of high modes are necessary in the shipbuilding industry due to the possible risks like fatigue failure.

Most towfish systems do not have propulsive devices and cannot compensate for perturbation motion, which can affect the observation data. This paper discusses attitude control of a towfish with elevators on the left and right tail wings to improve the quality of the observational data. Specifically, we investigate the relationships between the towing point, the center of gravity, and the drag forces produced by the elevators to clarify whether the elevators can control the attitude of the towfish sufficiently for various positions of the towing point and center of gravity. The feasible positions of the towing point and center of gravity are defined by mechanical analyses, and simulations are conducted to verify that the elevators can provide attitude control in these positions. The simulation results show that at some positions, the elevators can control the attitude quickly and sufficiently even if disturbances exist.

In this study, a hydrate inhibition system is investigated for shallow water gas fields. Mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) injection has been used as a typical method for inhibiting hydrate formation in gas fields; therefore, most offshore platforms are equipped with MEG injection and regeneration processes. A recent application of a kinetic hydrate inhibitor (KHI) has reduced the total volume of MEG injection and hence reduce the operating cost. Experiments are designed and performed to evaluate and verify the KHI performance for inhibiting hydrate formation under shallow water conditions. However, the shut-in and restart operation may require the injection and regeneration of MEG. For this operation, the MEG concentration must be optimized while considering the cost of MEG regeneration. The obtained results suggest that decreasing MEG concentration from 80 wt% to 70 wt% can reduce the life cycle cost (LCC) of MEG regeneration process by approximately 5.98 million USD owing to reduced distillation column cost. These results suggest that the hydrate inhibition system must be evaluated through well-designed experiments and process simulations involving LCC analysis.

Of late, demand for test sites for marine equipment such as ASV, AUV, ROV, and various underwater sensors is increasing. The authors have focused on an oscillating water column (OWC), which is being constructed near Chagwido Island Jeju, as one of the test-sites. The main objective of the OWC is to produce wave energy and develop technologies. It has been built in the sea approximately 1 km off the coast. It has berth accommodation and some rooms that can be used as laboratories. To investigate the feasibility of its usage as a test site for marine equipment, we acquired bathymetric data around the OWC by using a multi-beam echo sounder and a single-beam scanning sonar. The accessibility of the OWC from nearby ports and the use of support vessels or ships were also investigated. 3D point cloud data from the multi-beam echo sounder and 2D acoustic images from the scanning sonar are expected to be used as references for identifying changes over time. In addition, through these experiments, we derived a procedure to use this facility as a test site by using the IDEF0 functional modelling method. Based on this preliminary investigation and previously reported examples, we determined the general conditions and preferences for evaluating the performance of various marine equipment heuristically. Finally, we developed five applications that were derived from this investigation.

We developed a heavy-duty work class ROV trencher named URI-T (Underwater robot it's trencher) that can conduct burial and maintenance tasks for underwater cables and small diameter pipelines. It requires various supporting systems, including a dynamic positioning (DP) vessel, launch and recovery system (LARS), A-frame, and winch in order to perform burial tasks because of its dimensions (6.5 m × 5.0 m × 4.5 m, 20 t) and the tough working environment. However, operating a DP vessel has disadvantages as it is expensive to rent and operate and it is difficult to adjust the working schedule for some domestic coast construction cases. In this paper, we propose a method using a barge instead of a DP vessel to avoid the above disadvantages. Although burying the cable and pipeline using a barge has lower working efficiency than a DP vessel, it can save construction expenses and does not require a large crew. The proposed method was applied over two months at the construction of the water supply in Yokji-do, and the results were verified.

Underwater acoustics, which is the study of the phenomena related to sound waves in water, has been applied mainly in research on the use of sound navigation and range (SONAR) systems for communication, target detection, investigation of marine resources and environments, and noise measurement and analysis. Underwater acoustics is mainly applied in the field of remote sensing, wherein information on a target object is acquired indirectly from acoustic data. Presently, machine learning, which has recently been applied successfully in a variety of research fields, is being utilized extensively in remote sensing to obtain and extract information. In the earlier parts of this work, we examined the research trends involving the machine learning techniques and theories that are mainly used in underwater acoustics, as well as their applications in active/passive SONAR systems (Yang et al., 2020a; Yang et al., 2020b; Yang et al., 2020c). As a follow-up, this paper reviews machine learning applications for the inversion of ocean parameters such as sound speed profiles and sediment geoacoustic parameters.