Abstract
The spill of oil in the oceans of the world is a major concern for the offshore industry. With the recent spurt in awareness towards the environment, efforts are being made to control the spread of oil spills . One such mechanism used to control the spread of spilt oil is the containment boom. Oil is confined to a limited area with the help of a boom and then removed with the help of skimmers or other devices which can absorb oil. Surprisingly, not much work has been done in this field towards standardization of guidelines for deploying booms. Identifying the seriousness of this problem, a study of the sea-keeping performance of the boom was made by model testing. Experiments were performed in two stages with a 1:4 scale rigid model of a boom section and a 1:4 scale flexible model of a continuous boom respectively. The models were tested for varying boom parameters like buoyancy to weight ratio, mass distribution, skirt depth, gap ratio and mooring position. To understand the relationship between the different parameters, the booms were tested in different environments with regular, random and short-crested waves and different currents selectively. The motion of the boom, wave elevation, wave run-up and the mooring forces were measured using optical tracking systems, accelerometers, capacitance probes and load cells. Boom performance criteria were defined assuming that drainage and oversplash failures are the primary modes of failure. Results from the experiments were compared with predictions from a numerical code built using Boundary Element Method. Using these results, a guideline for the optimum design and selection of future booms was developed.
Muralidharan, Srikrishna (1996). Performance evaluation of containment booms. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -1996 -THESIS -M873.