Several significant improvements have been released during the second quarter of 2010. These focus on riser design, better soil modelling and hydrodynamics for jacket structures as well as non-linear hydrodynamic analysis of offshore floaters. We have also released a limited version of GeniE (including analysis and code checking of beams) intended for small projects.
DeepC has been extended to handle pipe-in-pipe contact forces, overlapping lines and flex joints - these are all important features for riser design analysis. Furthermore, it is possible to decompose result forces and moments making it easier for the engineer to understand the results.
The latest version of GeniE focuses on improved pile and soil modelling and in particular the ability to manually define PY, TZ and QZ curves. Our users will also save significant modelling time by using the new feature for linearly varying skin friction rather than making many soil layers with constant skin friction. For new and existing users working with smaller projects the GeniE.lite (a limited version of GeniE including analysis and beam code checking) is a favourable alternative to a full blown installation of GeniE.
The new functionality in HydroD comprises a more complete solution for non-linear hydrodynamic analysis of offshore structures since anchor and TLP elements as well as load transfer to a composite model (panel and Morison elements) are included. Furthermore, it is easier to make the mesh for offshore structures and the water surface by improvements in the integrated HydroMesh module. For stability analysis, HydroD automatically detects the rotation axis for damaged load cases and it also reports the so-called "waterline Z" which is the length between draught and centre of rotation.
Wajac has been released with a new option to calculate the wave kinematics directly during the load calculation instead of generating wave kinematics in a 3D grid. This is typically applicable when running a short term sea state analysis where also the number of time steps is important (the limit has been increased from 8 192 to 262 144 time steps). In other words - the same sea state can now be represented by many more small time steps.
The current version of Patran-Pre is based on the Patran 2008r2 with several improvements. Among them are variable thickness for 6/8 node shell elements, much faster import of Sesam Input Interface files (T*.FEM files) and handling of larger models on 64 bit machines.
The new capabilities of Usfos lead to easier understanding of the results as both vector plots and improved line visualisation are available.
We have also released new versions of Installjac including rotation limitations of the rocker arm and Stofat with improved picture generation.
For more detailed information, please see the release notes for each program as found on Sesam - download and update site.