Wave, Mooring, and Downtime Studies for Tibar Bay Port Development, East Timor

Numerical wave modeling, mooring analysis, and downtime assessment were conducted to support the development of a new port at Tibar Bay, East Timor. A regional scale wave transformation model was used to determine the nearshore wave conditions and a local wave penetration model was developed to simulate the wave penetration from outside to inside the bay and assess the wave conditions at the terminal. Mooring analysis was conducted for two representative design vessels: the largest 7000 TEU and the smallest 400 TEU container vessels, moored at the vertical closed quay, to compute the ship motions and loads in the mooring lines and fenders. Finally, downtime for both vessels at the two berths was estimated per PIANC guidelines. The calculations suggested that the operational downtime for 7000 TEU is approximately 1% at both Berth 1 and Berth 2 and higher downtime was predicted for the smallest container 400 TEU since it is more sensitive to wave action. The estimated downtime was considered acceptable.