MARIN claims breakthrough in realtime vessel motion prediction

Equipment & Technology - December 12, 2008

Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN) has announced that, working in close co-operation with OceanWaves GmbH and the University of Technology Delft, it has developed a new method to predict vessel motions two minutes ahead of the actual motion.

"This capability is paramount for offshore operations which are critically dependent on wave induced motions but only need a short quiescent period to conduct the operation safely," said MARIN in a statement.

"Examples of such operations are float-over-installation, ROV-handling, lift-on/off and helicopter landing. With the use of smaller vessels for well intervention, drilling, survey and installation, this capability is paramount for safety and workability within the oil and gas industry."

The new approach developed by MARIN and its partners uses remote wave sensing by means of X-band radar data processing, application of an advanced wave propagation model, and the use of computed vessel motion characteristics.

Critical in this computational method is the time required to conduct the data processing.

The complete chain of data processing was installed, verified and demonstrated with a monitoring campaign on board an 80m support vessel operating on DP offshore Norway.

By measuring the remote wave condition with a directional wave rider buoy, the local waves with a level gauge radar, and vessel motions in six modes by means of a motion sensor unit, a good reference data set was obtained for validating the system.

Results of the On-board Wave and Motion Estimator (OWME) Joint Industry Project (JIP) were presented and discussed recently by the participating companies in the FPSO JIP Week in Bilbao.