Orca Offshore together with ONE Simulation have performed a wave motion analysis using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).
This work was done to investigate the effect of the bottom on the motion characteristics of the vessel. This 400 foot vessel has to perform a heavy lift with only 60 cm keel clearance. The soil top layer of 5.0 m has also been included in the model.
The CFD model has been used as alternative for expensive and time consuming modeltest. This technology can now be used thanks to the affordable computer power available today. Still one run takes about 60 hours computer time to simulate 10 wave cycles. But results are very accurate and do include the important hydrodynamic effects to calculate motions of any type of structure in water.