ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN CONDITIONS FOR AN OFFSHORE AQUACULTURE SITE IN THE GULF OF MEXICO

David W. Fredriksson*, Andrew Drach, David L. Kriebel,
 
United States Naval Academy
Annapolis, MD 21402
fredriks@usna.edu
 

The development of offshore aquaculture in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) will require containment systems capable of withstanding extreme storm events.  In particular, knowledge of the forcing mechanisms induced by hurricanes on an aquaculture system is needed for effective configuration design and component specification.  The objective of this presentation is to provide an example of how to establish extreme design conditions for storms with return periods of 25-, 50- and 100-years.  The procedure includes examining environmental data sets from the National Data Buoy Center and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to characterize GoM hurricane force winds, waves and water current velocities at a particular site.  An application is also presented as described in the American Petroleum Institute publication, API Bulletin 2INT-MET, for use in the design of offshore structures.