Page 30: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (October 2016)

DESIGN: SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS

Computing Power

Simulating a FLNG unit in waves with STAR-CCM+ 475 km off the western coast of Australia, Prelude FLNG, the world’s ? rst ? oating lique? ed natural gas plat- form, is about to revolutionize the way natural gas is produced. As the largest offshore facility ever constructed,

Prelude FLNG boasts a length of 488 meters, a width of 74 meters and weighs around 600,000 tons. Still in its early days, the ? oating lique? ed natural gas (FLNG) technology will allow the freshly extracted natural gas to be processed and stored aboard, before being loaded onto LNG tankers, thereby permitting the exploitation of offshore resources that had been too costly or dif? cult to develop otherwise. In a scienti? c study undertaken by the Australian Maritime College (AMC) – a specialist institute at the University of Tasmania that focuses on seafaring and maritime engineering – numerical simulation was used to investigate how various wave scenarios will affect the motions and operations of such a facility. The computations were performed using STAR-CCM+.

FIGURE 1: Model test experiment in the AMC model test basin (All images courtesy CD Adapco) 30 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • OCTOBER 2016

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