Flow Simulation and Responses of High-Performance Vessels and Deepwater Offshore Platforms

The research conducted within the Laboratory for Ship and Platform Flows is focused on the development of state-of-the-art physical, analytical and computational methods for simulating the flow, loads and responses of ships, sailing yachts, high-speed vessels and offshore platforms.

A significant achievement of this research has been the development of the state-of-the-art ship-flow capability SWAN (Ship Wave ANalysis), which is widely regarded by the marine industry as the premier ship-flow simulation program. SWAN has been instrumental in the evolution of the hull-form shape of the current IACC (International America’s Cup Class) yacht hulls, and has been widely used to evaluate the performance of several existing vessels and candidate high-performance hull concepts for military and commercial applications. Similar developments have led to a widely accepted methodology for the simulation of linear and nonlinear flows around, and responses of, deepwater offshore platforms used for the exploration and production of oil and gas. In particular, this methodology forms the basis of the SML suite of programs, that includes SWIM (Slow Wave-Induced Motions – the “S” in SML), currently being used by the offshore industry to investigate the dynamically coupled responses of semi-submersibles, tension leg platforms, spars and other compliant-platform concepts in water depths approaching 10,000 ft (3,000 m). In offshore-platform hydrodynamics, research will continue in the area of fully coupled dynamics and responses of deep-water platforms. A number of fundamental issues remain unresolved when the hydrodynamics and responses of the platform are fully coupled with those of the platform mooring and riser systems.