‘The core of our business is to produce good and reliable hull structures, ’ says Hochung Kim, Vice President of the Basic Design Division at Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering in Seoul. ‘Many yards focus on cost reductions, and this is important, but the efficiency and quality of the design is much more important for us. It has to do with good engineering and reliable tools for design and analysis.’
Daewoo is one of six South Korean shipyards making use of DNVs newbuilding tool Nauticus Hull. It started as a pilot user in 1996 and has followed the development of the software from the beginning.
Independent of Class
Mr. Kim continues: We consider Nauticus Hull the best design tool we can get from class today. We make use of it not only for specific design cases, but also as a general basic design tool regardless of the class a vessel will be built to. It has contributed to increasing our efficiency, and has become an important part of our design and verification work.
Daewoo recently upgraded its software installation significantly, and is now DNVs largest Nauticus Hull customer with more than thirty licenses. The installation includes packages for Rule Check, Beam Element, Finite Element and Wave Load Analysis. The yard is also a pilot user for the new DNV Software FPSO package.
Functionality
We appreciate DNVs efforts to make such a user-friendly tool, says Kim. We do not need specific training to start using it. The Rules Scantlings program provides a quick approach to hull girder results, and good spread sheet solutions for local rule scantlings calculations such as bottom slamming and bow impact. Its capability to calculate fatigue stresses is unique, and it is a very good tool for wave load analysis. It is accurate in the way that if the procedures are followed it should be very difficult for a designer to miss any items, which reduces the chance of human error. Updates of the Rules are automatically in the software, so we avoid spending time updating the system ourselves.
Utilising the system
It is also important to add that the Design Division of Daewoo has been a major contributor to the development of Nauticus Hull. According to Chang Won Son, approval engineer at DNVs Pusan office, close cooperation with Daewoo and annual feedback meetings have been valuable input in updating the system to what it is today. Daewoo admits there were some installation problems in the beginning due to different operating systems, but after changing to a compatible system there have not been any major operating problems.
Hochung Kim concludes: Even though Nauticus is a user-friendly system, it is important to make use of qualified personnel to utilise it in the best possible way.