Wave study Seaflex mooring system : Wave study to illuminate how first and second order wave force transfer to and affects the loading of flexible Seaflex mooring system

When constructing a marina, one must consider many factors for calculating the mooring forces transferred to the mooring system of the docks. The forces transferred from waves is of course one of the most important. The wave induced forces may be described in different orders, the first-order wave forces from the frequency domain and the second-order wave forces determined from a wave field of different standing waves acting together. All floating objects are subjected to these wave forces, but for different mooring systems the transferred mooring force may vary. To describe the need for different calculations depending on the mooring system, a comparison to a spring system is made for both a Seaflex hawser and a guided pile system, which illustrates a significant difference in transferred mooring load. This is due to the hysteresis giving a low spring constant to the Seaflex hawser, which in turn transfers very little of the frequency induced first-order forces to the mooring system. This gives the conclusion that different methods for scaling the Seaflex mooring system is needed, since the first-order wave forces are not as significant than for a semi-rigid mooring system