Low Frequency Roll Motion of a Semi-Submersible Moored in Irregular Waves

A semi-submersible drilling rig is regarded as one of the typical offshore structures operated in the field with moderate environments such as the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil, and West Africa. Its typical roll and pitch natural periods are around 30 seconds, which avoids prevailing regions of the wave energy spectrum, and their responses in waves are quite acceptable for common operation conditions. But large roll and pitch motions can be induced by wave difference frequency energy spectrum if the metacentric heights of a semi-submersible decrease to small values in some loading conditions, and it is because the roll and pitch natural periods increase and approach to the region where the spectral density of the low frequency wave drift moment has significant value. This paper describes the low frequency roll motion of a semi-submersible that are excited by the wave 2nd order difference frequency energy by a series of model experiments. From the model tests with several different initial metacentric heights (GM), it was observed that a semi-submersible can experience large roll motion due to the wave group spectrum.