Engineers designing ship hulls and offshore floaters can now save time and money in the early design phase due to a breakthrough allowing transfer of 3D models from AVEVA Marine to Sesam GeniE, the two leading design and engineering software systems in the maritime and offshore market.

The new functionality, initiated by AVEVA to respond to the demand of the market, allows users to transfer AVEVA hull models into DNV GL’s Sesam GeniE for strength assessment and code check according to DNV GL Rules. Now users can significantly reduce the time and effort spent in early design of ship hulls and offshore floaters, as they save the extra manhours it takes to create separate analysis models from scratch in two different systems.

Demands of new Class Rules

“With the new harmonized Common Structural Rules for tankers and bulk carriers entering into force, significantly more finite element analysis is required for hull approval by classification societies,” says Are Føllesdal Tjønn, Managing Director of DNV GL - Software. “In today’s market, with extra focus on efficiency improvement and cost reduction, the collaboration between DNV GL and AVEVA enables designers and yards around the world to meet this criteria,” he says.

“The tighter integration between AVEVA Marine and Sesam GeniE is applicable to all kinds of ship types and floating structures and significantly improves efficiency and effectiveness of engineers in the early design and structural engineering process,” says Tjønn.

Market-driven development

“It is important for us to respond to customer requirements, and through AVEVA Marine’s integration with Sesam GeniE customers can benefit from access to its integrated applications created specifically for the unique processes of the engineering and design of ship and offshore structures,” says Julien de Beer, VP Engineering & Design Solutions, AVEVA. “This integration will create new efficiencies that enable shipbuilders to save time and money across the ship design process.”

The breakthrough is based on the advanced development of AVEVA Marine’s capabilities, where a highly detailed 3D design model is idealized and translated into a finite element method (FEM) 3D model, including the connectivity of structural components and the finite element mesh needed to calculate structural behaviour. With the new and powerful advanced mesh editing features in Sesam GeniE, it is then possible to quickly add loads and to refine the mesh, enabling accurate and effective structural analysis.

For ship structures, all loads and boundary conditions according to DNV GL Rules and IACS Common Structural Rules can be applied to the GeniE model. This makes it possible to easily document code compliance, including yield screening, buckling check and reporting. It is also possible within GeniE to make fine mesh models for fatigue assessment, either inside a coarse mesh model or in a separate local model with automatic transfer of loads and deflections.

The integration of the two software systems is part of an ongoing collaboration between AVEVA and DNV GL, which will include future integration for prescriptive rules between AVEVA Marine and DNV GL’s Nauticus Hull software. This will significantly increase efficiency and productivity for the approval of ship hulls according to the new DNV GL Rules.

“AVEVA is a heavyweight within 3D and early design for offshore structures and ships,” says Ole Jan Nekstad, Sesam Product Director at DNV GL - Software. “Their team has managed to tackle the challenge of model idealization and create a solution, which we have supported with testing. We are immensely pleased that AVEVA Marine now supports Sesam’s FEM format, and the result will be massive savings of engineering hours for our users.”