Evaluation Study on Ship-to-Ship Loading/Offloading
Safety Operation by Numerical Fluid Dynamics
Method
Rudi Walujo Prastianto
1*
, Fahmy Ardhiansyah
2
, Eko Budi Djatmiko
1
, Murdjito Murdjito
1
,
{rudiwp@oe.its.ac.id}
1
Ocean Engineering Department, Insitut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Surabaya, Indonesia
2
Doctoral Student in Ocean Engineering Department, Insitut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember,
Surabaya, Indonesia
Abstract. The demand of energy from our society is rapidly increased year on year linear
to the world economic growth. Ocean gives great energy potential resources to fulfill
energy need. For instance, oil and gas exploitation activities in offshore field had been
established for a long time. Thus, such kind of operation should be improved in manner of
safety to achieved global economy goal for a cleaner, safer, and sustain of the ocean. One
of the process during oil and gas exploitation is cargo loading and offloading from ship-
to-ship. Due to consider as dangerous goods, oil and gas cargo transfer process is obligated
to fulfill several safety criteria. A ship-to-ship configuration has more complex
hydrodynamic-induced motion behavior than the single ship. Due to its complexity, a
proper evaluation study is needed to evaluate a safety of the ship-to-ship operation. This
simulation study is performed by Numerical Fluid Dynamic method in ideal fluid
approach. In order to observe the complex hydrodynamic behavior, incident random wave
is applied to side-by-side ships in different configuration by considering three mains steps
during ship-to-ship operation i.e. berthing, moored, and un-berthing scenario. Criteria had
been being evaluated are ships clearances, relative motion between ships, ships roll
motion, forces acting on ships and tug boat, mooring lines loads and fenders deflection.
Not only internal factor from the ships evaluated as safety criteria but also the external
factor is evaluated. The external factor considered from weather are wind speed and wave
height limitation.
Keywords: Ship to Ship, Safety Operation Criteria, Fluid Dynamics, Ships Interaction
1 Introduction
Oil and gas is remain one of the proven solution in present energy need. The
exploitation of this resource usually conduct in onshore and offshore site with each site have
their challenging situations. When exploitation is conduct in offshore, the operation will face a
condition that environment is going to harsh during storm weather. Therefore, the exploitation
facilities should be able to withstand during its operation. Oil and gas offshore field are either
located in shallow water or deep water depend on number of this resource beneath ocean seabed.
In deep water, exploitation facilities is utilize floating structure due to its feasibility compare to
fixed structure. Fixed structure is technically and economically feasible to install in shallow
water up to mid water depth, for instance the deep water is not more than 100m. Oil and Gas
ICSEDTI 2022, October 11-13, Tanjungpinang, Indonesia
Copyright © 2023 EAI
DOI 10.4108/eai.11-10-2022.2326333