A Novel Approach to the Development of Squall Database for Mooring Response Based Analysis
This paper describes a novel approach to the characterisation of the winds associated with squall events. Squalls are short duration events during which wind speed increases rapidly and is often characterised by a substantial change in direction. Squalls are an important input for the design of offshore structures, particularly weather vaning facilities such as turret moored FPSO’s for which squalls may induce substantial mooring loads. This paper presents the development of a synthetic squall database covering 63 years and combining direct high resolution wind measurements together with weather balloon observations of the lower atmosphere and historical daily maximum wind gusts. The squall database was a key input into a mooring Response Based Analysis (RBA) of a turret moored FPSO located offshore North Western Australia. Details of the synthetic squall database development are presented including: regional squall regime characterization, direct measurements, identification of peak squall events from long term measured datasets, characterisation based on weather balloon observations, generation of representative synthetic time histories of squall events. The squall database, coupled with a conventional hindcast metocean database including associated wave and currents parameters, allowed characterization of the weather vaning performance of the FPSO and identification of design loads for mooring design purposes.