Fatigue life prediction of mooring chains for a floating tidal current power station

As a kind of clean and renewable energy, tidal current energy is becoming increasingly popular all over the world with the shortage of energy and environmental problems becoming more and more severe. A floating tidal current power station is a typical type of tidal current power transformers which can sustain the loads of wind, waves, and current, and even the extreme situation of a typhoon. Therefore, the mooring system must be reliable enough to keep the station operating normally and to survive in extreme situations. The power station examined in this paper was installed at a depth of 40 m. A 44 mm-diameter R4-RQ4 chain was chosen, with a 2 147 kN minimum break strength and 50 kN pretension. Common studless link chain was used in this paper. Based on the Miner fatigue cumulative damage rule, S-N curves of chains, and MOSES software, a highly reliable mooring system was designed and analyzed. The calculation results show that the mooring system designed is reliable throughout a 10-year period. It can completely meet the design requirements of American Petroleum institution (API). Therefore, the presented research is significant for advancing the design of this kind of power station.