Tai An Kou departing with spud barge overhanging on both sides

Project Summary

Early 2008, Great Lake Dredge & Dock Company relocated a large amount of dredging equipment from the Bahamas to the Middle East, using the heavy-lift ship Tai An Kou. Because the tight stowage plan called for a spud barge to be stowed athwardships, thus overhanging almost 20 m on both sides, Argonautics Marine Engineering became involved to assist in verifying the overall feasibility, and to access the potential for slamming and uplift of the barge. 

The time domain analysis was performed to study the behavior of the loaded vessel in various sea state conditions and wave headings. Buoyancy and slamming loads were generated for the various cases. The proposed stowage was feasible, and slamming was found to be limited to higher sea states and bow quartering wave heading only. The total dynamic loads on the spud barge were less than the design loads for the seafastening arrangement.       

Early March, after a carefully weather routed Atlantic crossing, the Tai An Kou safely arrived in the Middle East and offloaded all equipment.

Scope of Work

The project scope included:

• Modeling the ship and cargo;

• Generate buoyancy and slamming loads on the barge overhang, as function of wave height, wave period, and wave direction;

• Verify the adequacy of the seafastening design;

• Check strength of overhanging barge sections.

Time Domain Analysis Video

A short video showing the results of the MOSES time domain analysis for the most severe bow quartering case. Requires Windows Media Player.

 Time domain analysis...  

Acknowledgement

Photograph courtesy of MatthewsDaniel Company.