Experimental investigations of offshore triceratops under regular waves

For the development of marginal deep water oil fields many new platform concepts and design are emerging. Offshore triceratops is a relatively new concept for ultra deep water oil exploration. Triceratops has desirable characteristics of both TLP and Spar. It consists of deck structure supported on three buoyant leg structures (BLS) connected through ball joints. These joints make them a stable and heave restrained system; they do not pitch and roll but have limited surge and sway. The three BLS structures are connected to sea floor by tethering system. The present study discusses detailed experimental investigations carried out to analyze the structural response on the 1:150 scaled model of triceratops under regular waves. Influence of ball joints and tether tension variation on deck response is studied. Based on the experimental studies conducted, it is seen that deck response of Triceratops is relatively lower than BLS; deck remains horizontal for the encountered wave loads. Copyright © 2011 by ASME.