Modeling Offshore Wind Construction with Feeder Vessels: A Multi-Agent Discrete Event Simulation using Rapid Spectral RAO-based Hindcast Vessel Motions in a 2D Wave Environment

Presentation Description: A new Discrete Event Simulation (DES) model is presented to analyze complex offshore feeder operations which uses the following techniques:
1. Multi-agent interaction, tracking both the feeder fleet and the wind installation vessel.
2. Nonlinear task list progression such as a feeder standing off or even returning to harbor due to weather after partial cargo transfer to the installation vessel.
3. Frequency domain hindcast vessel motions in a 2D wave environment.
The model is applied to analyze multiple candidate feeder vessels and various turbine models, transit routes, and installation sites covering 41 years of hourly hindcast data. To accommodate this scope, a technique is applied to rapidly compute vessel motions using pre-computed Spectral Response Amplitude Operations (SRAOs) at each hindcast time step. SRAOs are referenced for each wave partition to approximate motions in long and short crested seas with wind waves and swell.
Weather uptime for this sensitive operation is drastically increased in some instances when the feeder vessel can be aligned to the predominant wave direction in a relatively long crested sea. By capturing the underlying hydrodynamics in the DES simulation, the method presented here can be applied to understand project schedule risk and fleet logistics during the project planning stages. This model can be further leveraged to offer operational guidance to the vessel operator during the wind farm construction phase.