Air-floating towing behaviors of multi-bucket foundation platform

Air-floating towing behaviors of multi-bucket foundation platform (MBFP) are investigated with the 1/20-scale model tests and hydrodynamic software MOSES. MOSES numerical model was validated by test results, and MOSES prototype model of MBFP can eliminate scale effect of model. The influences of towing factors of towing speed, water depth, freeboard, and wave direction on air-floating towing stability of MBFP were analyzed by model tests and validated MOSES prototype model. It is shown that the reduction of towing speed can effectively decrease the towing force and surge acceleration to improve towing stability. Water depth is another factor in towing stability. Obvious shallow water effect will appear in shallow water with small water depth-draft ratio and it will disappear gradually and air-floating towing becomes more stable with the increase of water depth. Accelerations of surge, sway and heave are small and they have modest changes when freeboard increases from 0.5 to 2 m. For MBFP, the freeboard is not suggested to be larger than 2 m in following wave. Wave direction has large influence on the towing stability, the surge acceleration and towing force are sensitive to the variation of wave direction, the surge acceleration and towing force in following wave (0°) and counter wave (180°) are much larger than that in transverse sea (90° and 270°).