Background and motivation

The offshore industry, MARIN and the Universities of Groningen and Delft have worked together successfully in the development of the Volume of Fluid method ComFLOW to study complex free-surface flows around offshore structures. Important aspects have been studied, implemented and validated like:

• Sloshing in LNG containment systems
• Air entrapment during wave impacts (“cushioning”)
• Wave run-up and deck impacts on semi-submersibles and TLPs

In the most recent Joint Industry Project ComFLOW-3, additional steps were made by including new functionalities to the ComFLOW program, such as:

• Modelling of viscous flow effects
• Local grid refinement
• Advanced wave propagation algorithms
• Absorbing boundary conditions for irregular and short crested waves
• Modelling of mooring lines and their influence on floater motions

During these developments, new questions and demands from participating companies and the offshore industry arose: significant speed-up of algorithms is needed to advance the usability of ComFLOW to more and more complex engineering applications; new and improved functionalities are needed to achieve results in a wider range of applications. The ComMotion JIP aims to meet these demands by developing and improving functionalities that increase computational accuracy and efficiency, and by incorporating new algorithms for interactively moving bodies, hydroelasticity and accurate steep irregular wave generation.

The joint industry project runs parallel to the identically-named research project ComMotion, which is financed by the Dutch government and supports 2 PhD students, a post-doc and validation model tests. The results of this research project are made available to the ComMotion JIP.

For more information, please read this documentation sheet.

Organisation and contact

The project will be conducted in close coorporation with the Universities of Groningen and Delft, the ComFLOW project team (RUG, TUD, FORCE Technology Norway, Deltares and MARIN) and all JIP participants. MARIN will act as JIP manager. All participants will be represented in the ComFLOW user group, with meetings every 6 months.

Deliverables

ComFLOW user group