CFD applications in offshore engineering

Offshore engineering applications generally require interactions between offshore structures and fluids in the form of oceanic flows or blast waves. A correct estimation of the forces caused by these flows is crucial in designing highly reliable structures to be used in offshore environment. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been used to analyze the fluid behavior and its influence on offshore structures by solving the equations of fluid motion. However, resolution of all spatial and temporal scales of the flow requires very time-consuming and complicated CFD simulations. This paper demonstrates various applications of simplified CFD methods in solving problems associated with offshore technologies. We present results of shock wave interaction with modular buildings and large pipes using Fluid-Solid Interaction (FSI) method and comment on their structural behavior and damage levels. Moreover, the impact of a drop object on a subsea pipeline protection structure is investigated using FSI and structural analysis. Furthermore, the air temperature increase inside a modular building is estimated using computational analysis of free convection coupled with heat transfer analysis of the modular building. Lastly, we will report CFD results of velocity enhancement of offshore columns and the hydrodynamic interact ion amongst groups of cylinders. Star-CCM+ is used for most of the CFD computations and is coupled with Abaqus for solving FSI problems. The results demonstrate how critical parameters such as fluid forces could be computed using simplified CFD approaches while often coupled with detailed structural analysis using finite element method to reduce their conservatism.