Experimental Investigation of the Movement of an Offshore Floating Platform in Straight Wind, Tornadic Wind, and Downburst Conditions

There is growing interest in multi-purpose offshore floating platforms that: harvest energy from the sun, wind, water, and waves; desalinize water; host agriculture aquaculture; house residents. While there are some basic commonalities with well established, oil gas platforms, lighter variants functionally different little wind research coverage. Here, we investigate a floating, multi-purpose, light duty platform under 1:150 scaled straight atmospheric boundary layer (ABL), tornado like vortices (TLV), downburst (DB) conditions. The experiments examined movement of geometrically six degrees freedom two mooring Configurations. Four Configurations studied, (1) Loosely moored platform, (2) Tightly (3) Platform ballast, (4) ballast weight on deck. DB winds produced greatest movement, followed by TLV winds. Little was seen ABL moved more than tightly moored.