Bureau Veritas, HydrOcean Provide CFD Services

International classification society Bureau Veritas has entered into a technical and commercial cooperation agreement with French hydrodynamic specialist HydrOcean. Under the agreement, HydrOcean will provide advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) services to BV’s shipping and offshore clients, and Bureau Veritas will market HydrOcean’s specialist services worldwide.

Jean-Francois Segretain, Technical Director, Bureau Veritas, said, “HydrOcean’s CFD services save massive amounts of time for ship, offshore structure and marine energy systems designers. For example, hull forms can be optimized by evaluating hundreds of designs over a wide range of load conditions in only a few weeks, and produce ship fuel consumption savings up to 10-15 percent.”

HydrOcean’s advanced numerical solutions can cost-effectively evaluate and optimize the performance of complex ship hull forms with appendages and propellers, offshore and marine energy units, accounting for non-linear and viscous effects, with a high degree of accuracy compared with model tests. These solutions are being co-developed with the Ecole Centrale Nantes fluid dynamic laboratory, one of the most advanced research teams in marine numerical simulation which provides HydrOcean with access to an unlimited number of licenses used in parallel, thus drastically reducing project costs and time schedules.

“Working with HydrOcean’s powerful tools,” says Segretain, “we are no longer limited to a small number of load conditions when optimizing hull forms. New vessels can now be optimized for a complete operational profile, which means genuine energy-saving over the entire working cycle of a vessel.”

Erwan Jacquin, HydrOcean CEO, explains, “CFD simulation is now extremely accurate and is being used increasingly in the marine and offshore industries.”

Segretain concludes, “HydrOcean saves costs, reduces design risks and improves vessel performance.”