• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.299-307
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• 2017

The design of the mooring line to maintain the position of an offshore structure in rough marine environments is recognized as a very important consideration. Conventional fatigue evaluation of a mooring line was performed by considering the tensile force acting on the mooring line, but the mooring line broke after 238 days in the girassol area even though the expected fatigue life was expected to be longer. The causes of this event are known to be due to OPB/IPB (out-of-plane bending/in-plane bending) caused by chain link friction due to the excessive tensile strength of the mooring line. In this study, three models with different boundary conditions were proposed for fatigue analysis of a mooring line considering OPB/IPB. Interlink stiffness was calculated by nonlinear structure analysis and a stress concentration factor was derived. In addition, the sensitivity of interlink stiffness according to the magnitude of tensile force, large deformation effect, and coefficient of friction was analyzed, and the effect of critical elastic slip and bending moment calculation position on interlink stiffness was confirmed.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.643-659
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• 2022

Geologic sequestration technologies such as CCS (carbon capture and storage), EGS (enhanced geothermal systems), and EOR (enhanced oil recovery) have been widely implemented in recent years, prompting evaluation of the mechanical stability of storage sites. As fluid injection can stimulate mechanical instability in storage layers by perturbing the stress state and pore pressure, poroelastic models considering various injection scenarios are required. In this study, we calculate the pore pressure, stress distribution, and vertical displacement along a surface using commercial finite element software (COMSOL); fault slips are subsequently simulated using PyLith, an open-source finite element software. The displacement fields, are obtained from PyLith is transferred back to COMSOL to determine changes in coseismic stresses and surface displacements. Our sequential use of COMSOL-PyLith-COMSOL for poroelastic modeling of fluid-injection and induced-earthquakes reveals large variations of pore pressure, vertical displacement, and Coulomb failure stress change during injection periods. On the other hand, the residual stress diffuses into the remote field after injection stops. This flow pattern suggests the necessity of numerical modeling and long-term monitoring, even after injection has stopped. We found that the time at which the Coulomb failure stress reaches the critical point greatly varies with the hydraulic and poroelastic properties (e.g., permeability and Biot-Willis coefficient) of the fault and injection layer. We suggest that an understanding of the detailed physical properties of the surrounding layer is important in selecting the injection site. Our numerical results showing the surface displacement and deviatoric stress distribution with different amounts of fault slip highlight the need to test more variable fault slip scenarios.