Abstract An approach for treating mooring line response problems is described. Relative to other methods, greater generality and computational efficiency is achieved. The technique is a form of incremental linearlization. The initial equilibrium configuration is obtained from explicit integrations of the system equations including only the most important load. The nonlinear differential equations are linearized through perturbations with small increments of loads. The line solution or transfer matrix formulation is used to establish the basic configuration for perturbation. Changes in mooring line properties and loads are accommodated. Both static and dynamic analysis solution procedures are treated. Introduction Almost al I offshore operations and deep ocean installations involve mooring lines. The reliability of such offshore moorings is an essential ingredient in the reliability of the installations and in the success of the operations. It is therefore very important that the performance of the mooring lines subject to the environmental forces in the ocean can be accurately predicted. Mooring line performance has been the subject of many recent investigations, e.g., References I, 2, 3, 4, 5. Beateaux has written a detailed and comprehensive summary of the existing analytical solutions to mooring line statics. Other contributions to the statics problem can be traced from The references in References 3 and 6. Despite these efforts the problem of mooring line performance is only partially solved. AI I existing solutions are limited by restrictions on the characteristics of the mooring lines and/or the external forces of the environment. Through the application of the line solution approach coupled with an incremental technique for the nonlinear problem, the method presented here removes most of these restrictions and overcomes most of the difficulties encountered by the existing solutions. The primary sources of the difficulties associated with currently available approaches can be attributed to the nonlinearity of the equations of motion and the free end boundary conditions. Because of the nonlinearity explicit solutions have been derived for only a few special cases. The free end boundary condition causes difficulties for all numerical solutions. Many solutions for transmission lines and cables are not applicable to mooring lines because of this type of boundary condition. Some iterative schemes for mooring line studies can even be divergent. The various existing approaches and their I imitations are reviewed in the following section. The new approach outlined were is appropriate for both two and three-dimensional problems. For reasons of simplicity, the detailed formulations are limited to the two dimensional problem. The, Problem And Existing Solution Methods Static Equations A segment of the two-dimensional cable system of Fig. I Is shown In Fig. 2 with common environmental forces. Equilibrium conditions applied to this segment lead to:(Mathematical equation available in fullpaper)