Automating design screening to save many manual hours.

To bid on a major newbuild project with an early stage vessel design, our client required a quick way to determine average stress ranges for critical fatigue locations.

We provided the required information by enhancing and automating existing analysis tools.

We achieved this by:

• using previous design analysis (FDA2), carried out by us for other purposes, to calculate values for average stress ranges at the critical fatigue locations 
• modifying our Waveload-FD software to screen the significant quantities of data gathered to date, acquiring the maximum bending moment response amplitude operator (RAO) for each longitudinal section of interest
• using the maximum bending moment RAO to determine the maximum stress, based on existing properties for each section of the vessel. 

For screening, we used hydrodynamic assessments from the FDA2 analysis. This is the results from all of the vessel's speeds, headings and wave spectra while operating in specified geographic areas. Such analysis generates a very large volume of data.

Our client successfully submitted a compliant bid to deadline. Our automated screening solution saved the company many manual hours processing the data and calculating the required stress ranges. 

Using this automated screening process during the design phase enables an early stage vessel design to be cost effectively evaluated against different conditions. This provides opportunities for design optimisation, identifying areas of concern before investing in costly structural detailed analysis.