The motivation for this study is the fast development of floating offshore wind energy and the immature methodology and engineering practice related to predictions of vortex-induced motions (VIM). Benefiting from the oil and gas industry, in the past several decades, extensive knowledge and experience on vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) on slender marine structures has been gained. As the learnings from these efforts should be transferred and adapted to the renewable energy industry, a state-of-the-art review on influential VIM research has been carried out in this paper, focusing on: (1) engineering practice, (2) model tests, (3) numerical calculation, and (4) field measurement. Engineering gaps and potential research topics are identified as future work.

Slender marine structures such as deep-water riser systems are continuously exposed to currents, leading to vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) of the structure. This may result in amplified drag loads and fast accumulation of fatigue damage. Consequently, accurate prediction of VIV responses is of great importance for the safe design and operation of marine risers. Model tests with elastic pipes have shown that VIV responses are influenced by many structural and hydrodynamic parameters, which have not been fully modelled in present frequency domain VIV prediction tools. Traditionally, predictions have been computed using a single set of hydrodynamic parameters, often leading to inconsistent prediction accuracy when compared with observed field measurements and experimental data. Hence, it is necessary to implement a high safety factor of 10–20 in the riser design, which increases development costs and adds extra constraints in the field operation. One way to compensate for the simplifications in the mathematical prediction model is to apply adaptive parameters to describe different riser responses. The objective of this work is to demonstrate a new method to improve the prediction consistency and accuracy by applying adaptive hydrodynamic parameters. In the present work, a four-step approach has been proposed: First, the measured VIV response will be analysed to identify key parameters to represent the response characteristics. These parameters will be grouped by using data clustering algorithms. Secondly, optimal hydrodynamic parameters will be identified for each data group by optimisation against measured data. Thirdly, the VIV response using the obtained parameters will be calculated and the prediction accuracy evaluated. Last but not least, classification algorithms will be applied to determine the correct hydrodynamic parameters to be used for new cases. An iteration of the previous steps may be needed if the prediction accuracy of the new case is not satisfactory. This concept has been demonstrated with examples from experimental data.

Exploration of oil and gas in deep and ultra-deepwater under harsh weather condition is challenging. A steel lazy wave riser (SLWR) is considered to be a cost-effective alternative to get the gas or oil flow up to the platform under these conditions. The staggered buoyant section provides buoyancy force which forms an arch shape of the SLWR. This arch shape makes the SLWR configuration flexible and isolates the dynamic responses of the upper part and lower part of the riser. However, there is a lack of full understanding of the behavior of SLWRs. This is, due to a complicated loading from waves, vessel motions and flow induced vibrations caused by ocean currents, complex structural configurations, and non-linearities. Time-domain simulation is necessary to accurately predict the dynamic responses and capture the non-linearities. Realistic fatigue damage calculation is essential in the design phase of SLWR. The design of SLWR could be optimized with a better understanding of the dynamic responses of SLWR.

Vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) can lead to fast accumulation of fatigue damage and increased drag loads for slender marine structures. VIV responses mainly occur at the vortex shedding frequency, while higher harmonics can also be excited. Recent VIV model tests with flexible pipes have shown that higher harmonics in the crossflow (CF) direction can contribute to the fatigue damage significantly due to its higher frequency. Rigid cylinder experiments show that the CF third-order harmonics are more pronounced when the motion orbit is close to a “figure 8” shape and the cylinder is moving against the flow at its largest CF motion. However, there is still lack of understanding of when and where higher harmonics occur for a flexible pipe. Therefore, significant uncertainty remains on how to account for fatigue damage due to higher harmonics in VIV prediction. In the present paper, representative VIV data from various riser model test campaigns are carefully studied and analyzed. The key parameters that influence the magnitude of the third-order harmonic stress are found to be the bending stiffness, the reduced velocity, and the orbit stability. The experimental data are analyzed in order to assess the impact of each parameter on the third-order harmonic stress. A preliminary empirical response model to estimate the maximum CF third-order harmonic stress based on these identified structural and hydrodynamic parameters has been proposed. The results of this study will contribute to reduce the uncertainty and unnecessary conservatism in VIV prediction.

As the development of offshore oil and gas continues to move into deeper waters, the risers connecting the seabed infrastructure to the offshore platform are getting longer. This means that vortex-induced vibration (VIV) may occur at different frequencies along the riser due to current variation, making the VIV prediction challenging. To increase the VIV prediction accuracy, an empirical time-domain VIV model has been developed. The advantage of the model is that it can account for structural non-linearities such as variable tension and time-varying flow. The robustness of the time-domain VIV model has been verified with respect to the several tests, but the length/diameter (L/D) ratio of the risers used in the experiments has so far been relatively small, and the response mode number accordingly low. Therefore, additional validation is needed to understand the uncertainties for the prediction of VIV for deep-sea riser systems at high-mode order. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the use of time-domain model for high-mode VIV response prediction of deep-sea riser systems. This was done by a comparison study applying the Hanøytangen high-mode VIV test data. The main comparison was made regarding the dominating frequency and fatigue damage estimation. For selected empirical parameters, the model demonstrated a good correlation with the experiments. However, the simplified riser model that was utilized in the simulations caused some discrepancies between numerical simulations and the experimental results, which need to be further investigated.

Deepwater risers are susceptible to vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) when subjected to currents. When responding at high modes, fatigue damage in the inline (IL) direction may become equally important as the crossflow (CF) components. Accurate calculation of both IL and CF responses is therefore needed. Empirical VIV prediction programs, such as VIVANA “Passano et al. (2016, “VIVANA—Theory Manual Version 4.8,” Trondheim, Norway),” SHEAR7 “(Vandiver, J. K., and Li, L., 2007, “Shear7 v4.5 Program Theoretical Manual,” Department of Ocean Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA),” and VIVA “Triantafyllou et al. (1999, “Pragmatic Riser VIV Analysis,” Offshore Technology Conference, Houston, TX, May 3–6, Paper No. OTC-10931-MS.)” are the most common tools used by the offshore industry. Progress has been seen in the prediction of CF responses. Efforts have also been made to include an IL load model in VIVANA. A set of excitation coefficient parameters were obtained from rigid cylinder test and adjusted using measured responses of one of the flexible cylinder VIV tests. This set of excitation coefficient parameters is still considered preliminary and further validation is required. Without an accurate IL response prediction, a conservative approach in VIV analysis has to be followed, i.e., all current profiles have to be assumed to be unidirectional or acting in the same direction. The purpose of this paper is to provide a reliable combined IL and CF load model for the empirical VIV prediction programs. VIV prediction using the existing combined IL and CF load model in VIVANA is validated against selected flexible cylinder test data. A case study of a deepwater top tension riser (TTR) has been carried out. The results indicate that VIV fatigue damage using two-dimensional directional current profiles is less conservative compared to the traditional way of using unidirectional current profiles.