| Abstract | Over the past few years, Dynamic Positioning (DP) systems have seen increasing use in the offshore oil and gas and marine industries. As operations move into more hostile and deeper waters, the need for DP systems has become almost mandatory. Therefore, an understanding of the interaction between the DP thruster wake and structures (production lines, moorings and any submerged structure members) in the slipstream is of great practical interest. There is increasing demand for such information from the offshore oil and gas, and marine industries, to increase the reliability and safety of applying DP systems. In this paper, a detailed momentum analysis of a DP thruster near and far wake using experimental measurements is presented. The wake measurements were performed on a DP thruster model using Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry (SPIV), with and without a nozzle and over a range of advance coefficient values including the bollard pull condition. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive and systematic momentum analysis of the flow produced from the operation of a DP thruster with and without a nozzle under varied operating conditions. |
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