Study on the Multi-Body Dynamic Characteristics of FPSO Soft Yoke Mooring System Based on Symplectic Algorithm

Abstract The soft yoke single-point mooring (SYMS) system is the main mooring approach for the floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) unit. As a typical multi-rigid-body system, a SYMS consists of the single-point turret, yoke, mooring legs, and mooring support. It releases the rotational degrees of freedom of an FPSO through the combined effects of multiple joint structures, so as to deliver the weather-vane effect of the FPSO. In this paper, a multi-body dynamics model of the soft yoke mooring system was established. To deal with the difficult integration in the process of solving differential-algebraic equations, a symplectic numerical integration method was proposed on the basis of the Zu Chongzhi method. The proposed solution format had simple symplectic property automatically satisfying the Hamilton system, as well as a high accuracy in solving nonlinear systems. The measured data of the FPSO’s six degrees of freedom (6DoF) under two different sea conditions were selected, and the mooring restoring force of the SYMS was calculated. The calculated results showed that the symplectic solution method could the actual stress state of the structures with more obvious dynamic characteristics. Furthermore, the displacement and stress state of the single-body structures, such as the mooring legs and yoke, and the analysis result could comprehensively evaluate the overall working state of the SYMS.