Experimental Study on Coordinated Heading Control of Four Vessels Moored Side by Side

A floating type liquefied natural gas (LNG) bunkering terminal has been under development in Korea since 2014; the terminal is designed to receive LNG from an LNG carrier (LNGC) and transfer it to two other LNG bunkering shuttles (LNGBS) simultaneously. The operational feasibility of the LNG loading and unloading processes has been confirmed. When four vessels are moored side by side with mooring ropes and fenders, their positions must be maintained within the designed allowable criteria. In addition, the floating bunkering terminal (FLBT) has its own mooring system, an internal turret with catenary mooring lines and stern tunnel thrusters to maintain its own position and control the vessel heading. In this study, we investigated the operational feasibility of the FLBT during the LNG loading and unloading operations with four vessel mooring configurations and heading controls. A series of model tests was done in the ocean engineering basin of the Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean engineering. The motion responses of the four vessels were determined using an optical measurement system, and the tensile loads on ship-to-ship mooring ropes and the compressive loads on ship-to-ship fenders were measured using one-axis load cells. A white noise test was done and the results were compared with the numerical results for the purpose of validation. Then, four combined environmental conditions were presented both without heading control and with several heading control cases. Finally, we determined the available safe bunkering heading ranges taking into account the tensile loads on the mooring ropes