ARIANE-3D upgraded for hydrodynamic studies

ARIANE, the Bureau Veritas mooring analysis software, has been used by the offshore industry for the past 13 years. The more recently developed ARIANE-3Dynamic (in collaboration with MCS) is now operated by more than 45 companies worldwide. It has also been approved by the NMD and is certified by Elf and Shell standards for mooring analysis. Because of its broad but specialized scope of work, ARIANE-3Dynamic can fully tackle the following design, verification and research subjects/problems:

• Keeping FPSOs on station, either by single point, CALM, DICAS or spread mooring systems, including taut, semi-taut and catenary configuration
• Offloading operations via conventional and full dynamically positioned tankers, with/without tug assistance
• Keeping drilling units on station (semisubmersibles, barges, etc) via taut, semi-taut and catenary configurations
• Connection of a floating unit (LNG tanker etc) to a fixed structure (wharf or platform) by means of a temporary or permanent mooring system
• Installation procedures in difficult environments - complex seabed, presence of pipelines, wellheads.

According to Bureau Veritas, ARIANE-3Dynamic has also been able to tackle all major theoretical developments in mooring analysis. For deepwater studies, its key benefits include full-time domain line dynamics computation and the ability to deal with load-dependent and frequency-dependent elastic material such as polyester. Here, the user can also benefit from Bureau Veritas' expertise in this field, as the first authority to have certified more than 100 km of polyester rope used in deepwater mooring systems.

This year, a full Windows version is being released, which includes major upgrades both theoretically and for the user-friendly interface. BV's HYDROSTAR hydrodynamic software, will also be implemented as a pre-processor in order to compute hydrodynamic data for any type of floating unit. The user will simply have to select a mesh from an extensive library (ship-shape vessel, barge, semi, TLP, etc) and the program will create a specific mesh from the user data, including loadings and stiffness induced by mooring. It will then perform the hydrodynamic computation on the newly-created mesh, to issue all the necessary data for dynamic computation to be directly used by ARIANE-3Dynamic.

For the user, the main advantage is that he will not have to handle and transfer files, nor does he need to be an expert in mesh creation or hydrodynamic calculation. Furthermore the user will have the capacity to implement wave drift damping, to describe up to five vessels connected to each other, to refine the irregular sea description, in addition to full Windows graphical displays and online helps.