An Analytical Approach to Predict Downtime in Caspian Sea for Installation Operations

As there is no available environmental data for southern part of the Caspian Sea, for evaluation of sensitive operations such as installations of platforms and the like, in this paper generation of wave characteristics based on the available wind data recorded by Khazar Oceanography buoy [1] is presented. The mentioned buoy is installed in south-eastern part of Caspian Sea located 30 Km from Neka at water depth of 35 m by KEPCO. It is to be mentioned that unfortunately, there is only one year recorded data available. The recorded wave data have only local validity and are not useable for other points of the Caspian Sea, particularly for deep water areas; therefore recorded waves are used only for comparison purpose and are not used in formulation. Based on wind recorded data and by using the Bretschneider spectrum [2] and formulas [3, 4], wave characteristics have been simulated for deep water parts of the Caspian Sea. The wind duration, wind velocity, fetch length, water/air temperature differences are considered in the simulation. Some limitations for wave hight, wave period and wind velocity are considered as limitation criteria for installation operations.