Neutral buoyancy

Neutral buoyancy

Fluid Statics

Published in Ahlam I. Shalaby, Fluid Mechanics for Civil and Environmental Engineers, 2018

One may note that neutral buoyancy occurs when the density of the body is equal to the density of the fluid. As such, the immersed/completely submerged neutrally buoyant/naturally suspended body will not sink or float unless an external force is applied. Rather, it will remain at rest at any/some point in the fluid. Therefore, a sinking body can be made into a neutrally buoyant body by attaching floatation material in order to decrease the overall density of the body–floatation material combination. An example of this would be placing a life jacket on a person. Furthermore, a floating body can be made into a neutrally buoyant body by adding a weight in order to increase the overall density of the body–weight combination. An example of this would be attaching an anchor to a floating body.

Station keeping of a subsea shuttle tanker system under extreme current during offloading

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Journal Information

Published in Ships and Offshore Structures, 2023

Yucong Ma, Terje Andreas Jevnaker, Yihan Xing

The unloading process of the SST is illustrated in Figure 2. The SST will first hover in the vicinity above the subsea well during this process. Then, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) deployed at the subsea well launches and carries a flowline to mate with the SST. After the flowline is appropriately connected, the SST discharges CO2 to the wellhead. Meanwhile, it pumps in seawater to ensure neutral buoyancy. Finally, the ROV disconnects with the SST when this process is finished. The entire offloading operation consumes 4 h. The SST is subjected to various environmental loads, as illustrated in Figure 3, such as hydrostatic pressure, wave loads in shallow water, and ocean current.

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Fluid Statics

Station keeping of a subsea shuttle tanker system under extreme current during offloading