Concept Design of a Floating Support Structure for Hydrophilic Crop

Aquatic farming of food- and non-food products is slowly entering the public attention as growing populations and living standards worldwide drive the demand for high-quality foods. The Ocean Farm Kiel (OFK) and the Fraunhofer Research Institute for Marine Biotechnology and Cell Technology L\"ubeck (EMB) are hence looking into the production of various food products within the German Baltic Coast. To help support this cause is a structure operating in the Bight of Kiel designed to enable the growth of \emph{Salicornia europaea agg.}, an eatable salt loving plant irrigated with seawater. Engineering design tools are engaged to develop a concept design which is verified by analyzing the interaction between structure, mooring system and environment using potential theory and time domain simulations. The environment at the site of operation, the fundamental methods to carry out this analysis and their implementation in the necessary tools are described. The thesis concludes with the presentation of the results gathered about the rigid body motions of the structure and the reaction of the mooring arrangement interconnected with the structure's motion characteristic. The former prove to be beneficial for the intended purpose as the motion amplification is considered low overall. The mooring arrangement too demonstrated a positive behavior as it manages to fulfill the strict layout demands while moving natural motion periods beyond the wave frequency of the worst case seastate. The mooring arrangement analysis however also revealed the mooring arrangement being unfit for seastates beyond the survival condition, challenging the concept of implementing the structure designed in more exposed locations then the Bight of Kiel