Occupant comfort analysis for rigid floating structures – methodology and design assessment for offshore dwelling module
Gil Wang, Yehiel Rosenfeld, Nitai Drimer, Yiska Goldfeld
Abstract
The concept of Modular Floating Structures (MFS) presents a unique alternative to increase the available land resources in the adjacent marine environment of coastal cities. It offers a sustainable technological adaptation that can help mitigate overdevelopment and urban growth limitations. This study examines the comfort range of a suburban offshore MFS module, by using a novel methodology that reconciles residential comfort criteria with seakeeping. The investigation is performed by characterising the hydrodynamic structural response and analysing its compatibility for offshore dwellings. It is demonstrated that the MFS module complies to marine regulations, including seakeeping and comfort, but when evaluating its hydrodynamic response to the accepted accelerations in residential buildings, it reaches performance limits at a certain sea state. This may influence the choice of environment, based on the allowable significant wave height, or call for better hydrodynamic performance using multi-body configuration.