The purpose of this study is to investigate the hydrodynamic properties of an oyster floating raft system under environmental loadings. The floating raft system is an important facility for raising oyster in the near shore area of Tainan, Taiwan. The reasons for this kind of oyster culture being main income source for local fish farmers are as the following features: (1) low cost for the farming system, (2) easily to be installed in the field, and (3) easily to be harvested. Due to the raft structure could not withstand the impact of heavy storms; most of the oyster rafts are towed into harbor to avoid damage before the onset of typhoon. Since some unexpected violent sea states may occur and severely affect the integrity of raft system, the investigation of the hydrodynamic properties of a floating raft system is essential for oyster culture in the open sea. This study includes two parts: numerical simulation and physical modeling. In numerical simulation, a lumped mass method with a Morison type of relative motion equation are adopted to calculate the drag and inertial forces on raft components and then are equally divided to the associated nodes to form a system of motion equations based on Newton¡¦s second law. Through the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method, the dynamic performance of the oyster raft system can be obtained. To verify the numerical model, a physical model was carried out in a wave tank (35x1x1.2 m), and the results of dynamic performance of numerical model show good agreement with measurements. A case study of an in situ oyster farming system located near-shore of Tainan region is analyzed by the developed numerical model to investigate the maximum mooring tension, the optimal gap between rafts, and the required length of mooring line. These specifications are crucial to the shell fish farmers for their floating raft system to be survived in the strong currents and waves. The results showed that the optimum configuration for a raft system generated the lowest mooring tension is as the follows: the space between oyster rafts is about a length of oyster raft; the length of mooring line is three times of the water depth, which is consistent with the present practice of shell fish farmers adopting 3~4 times of water depth; the appropriate embedment anchor weight is 70 kg but the anchorage should be the type used by the farmers in Penghu county. Finally, this work intends to offer a guideline for the installation of oyster raft systems in the field, and anticipate minimizing the damage during the unexpected heavy sea states.

There are four types of oyster aquaculture such as oyster plug rod, horizontal hanging scaffold, pontoon-style longline, and floating raft system. This study is to investigate the mooring tension of an oyster floating raft system under environmental loadings. According to the hydrodynamic experimental test, the horizontal fluid velocity has a retarded phenomenon when encountering the front part of structure, and then gradually reduces to a stable situation after the second floating rod. The phenomenon is identified as shielding effect for the raft system and has been used as a shielding coefficient to modify the fluid velocity in the computation program. The dynamic analysis of floating raft system under random wave interaction is investigated numerically and experimentally. The lumped mass method is applied to divide the structure into many nodes and elements. A modified Morison equation dealing with moving structure components is used to calculate the environmental forces on the elements. Further, the forces on elements are divided equally into neighboring nodes to form the equation of motion based on Newton¡¦s second law. Finally, the 4th-order Runge-Kutta (RK4) method is used as a time marching scheme to predict the displacement and velocity of nodes for the next time step. The results of time series and spectrum analysis of mooring tension show good agreement between numerical predictions and experimental data. This paper has further expanded to predict the field oyster raft system in an open sea, and offers some useful information to the oyster farmers in terms of improving the structure safety.

Offshore culture becomes the most attractive industry in last decades because of overfishing and excessively pumping groundwater causing land subsidence social problems. Oyster culture is one of offshore culture with several advantages such as easy set-up and without feeding cost. In this study, we focus on a longline-style oyster aquaculture system because it is recyclable, high growing efficiency and advanced technique against traditional tidal flat culture. This study establishes a numerical model through a lumped mass method, then employs fourth order Runge-Kutta method to solve the system of motion equations and evaluates the tension on the anchor rope. The results show the discrepancy between the numerical model and experimental data is lower than 4% in current-only situation, and similarly in wave-only situation the discrepancy is lower than 6%. The comparison results indicate that the numerical model is capable to predict the environmental loadings on longline-style oyster culture system. An in-situ case study of a longline-style oyster aquaculture system via regular and random waves, located in the Penghu Bay, is investigated based on the sea-state, Chebi Typhoon occurred in June, 2001, causing a catastrophic damage to the cage aquaculture. The conclusions of dynamic responses of the case study may be utilized as guidance for the local oyster farmers to build and protect their oyster culture system in the Bay.