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Fatigue vulnerability of sea cage to storm wave loads

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Abstract

Severe damage and losses during extreme marine events are the primary hindrance for the development of offshore cage culture. Fatigue rupture subject to cyclic wave loads is the major failure mechanism of HDPE sea cages. The internal stress generated by hydrodynamic loads could be much lower than the material yield strength but results in anisotropic cumulative damage. Present work explores structural vulnerability of sea cage to storm waves by theoretical analysis, hydro-elastic modeling, storm wave simulation, and post-disaster damage validation. The collar stress, tension of net pen, and mooring line are correlated to the ambient wave height and have direct implications for the required fatigue loading cycles with respect to given material strength. The flotation collar pipe was identified as the most fragile component with the lowest fatigue thresholds. The stress reaching 73% and 62% of ultimate rupture strength corresponds to the probable structural failure within 8–16 min and 1–3 h during a typhoon event. Degradation of HDPE due to oscillations, oxidation, and bio-erosion causes acute decrease in its status quo strength with increase in service time. Most of the typical circular fish cages deployed along China’s coastline may not withstand a storm with 4–5 m significant wave height, which is quite lower than the manufacture standard. This study provides a practical methodology to predict storm damage risk for mariculture or other coastal ocean facilities subject to cyclic hydrodynamic loads before preventive measures should be taken.

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© National Meteorological Center; Zoom-in satellite image of cage-culture zones (a, b, c) at bays of Nanji Islands 50 km offshore the southeast coast of China, © Google Earth

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Data availability

The wave, tide, and bathymetry data adopted in present work is available upon request by contacting the authors.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded under the operational funding of National Marine Hazard Mitigation Service, Ministry of Natural Resources, P. R. China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China grant 52071350, 41876053. Their support is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Marine Hazard Mitigation Service, Ministry of Natural Resources, Beijing, 100000, People’s Republic of China

    Yao Zhang, Haoshuang Guo, Shan Liu & Qiang Liu

  2. Marine Monitoring and Forecasting Center of Zhejiang, Hangzhou, 310000, People’s Republic of China

    Jing Guo

Authors
  1. Yao Zhang
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  2. Haoshuang Guo
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  3. Shan Liu
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  4. Qiang Liu
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  5. Jing Guo
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Contributions

YZ conducted the investigation and research work, wrote the manuscript. HG and SL contributed to result interpretation and manuscript writing. QL led the research project and the post-disaster field survey. JG contributed to the numerical simulation and data.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Qiang Liu.

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Cite this article

Zhang, Y., Guo, H., Liu, S. et al. Fatigue vulnerability of sea cage to storm wave loads. J Mar Sci Technol 28, 153–164 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00773-022-00915-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00773-022-00915-4

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