Mooring Analysis of a Floating Fish Cage in Deep Sea Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

In the fisheries industry, meeting market demands through aquaculture at deep sea has become a challenging task. Traditional fish cage farming in shallow waters has limited fish resources. To address this issue while considering the mobility expenses of subsidized traditional fishing vessels, the author proposes designing a floating fish cage for deep-sea operation. Equipped with mooring lines, this floating fish cage aims to counter undesirable rotation and translation caused by environmental forces. The motion analysis, using the quadratic transfer function method in ANSYS-AQWA Workbench, considered various environmental loads such as regular and irregular waves, winds, and currents. Results indicate the highest response amplitude operator (RAO) motion in surge translation (8.079 m) and pitch rotation (3.084°) from 0º wave direction. The actual response shows motion when the mooring system is used, with the highest surge translation at 10.566 m and pitch rotation at 1.866° from split point mooring. Cable tension analysis reveals split point mooring with the highest tension at 952.718 kN on cable 2 and split point (V) mooring with the maximum tension between 38 and 55 kN for each cable.