• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
• /
• v.24 no.5
• /
• pp.628-636
• /
• 2018

Because large buoys are mainly made of steel, they are heavy and vulnerable to corrosion by sea water. This makes buoy installation and maintenance difficult. Moreover, vessel collision accidents with buoys and damage to vessels due to the material of buoys (e.g., steel) are reported every year. Recently, light buoys adopting eco-friendly and lightweight materials have come into the spotlight in order to solve the previously-mentioned problems. In Korea, a new lightweight buoy with a 7-Nautical Mile lantern adopting expanded polypropylene (EPP) and aluminum to create a buoyant body and tower structure, respectively, was developed in 2017. When these light buoys are operated in the ocean, the visibility and angle of light from the lantern installed on the light buoys changes, which may cause them to function improperly. Therefore, research on the performance of light buoys is needed since the weight distribution and motion characteristics of these new buoys differ from conventional models. In this study, stability estimation and motion analyses for newly-developed buoys under various environmental conditions considering a mooring line were carried out using ANSYS AQWA. Numerical simulations for the estimation of wind and current loads were performed using commercial CFD software, Siemens STAR-CCM+, to increase the accuracy of motion analysis. By comparing the estimated maximum significant motions of the light buoys, it was found that waves and currents were more influential in the motion of the buoys. And, the estimated motions of the buoys became larger as the sea state became worser, which might be the reason that the peak frequencies of the wave spectra got closer to those of the buoys.