out at MARIN’s HQ and this was the first time he had visited the organisation.


In his opinion MARIN’s primary function is to help clients in the process of design verification. And MARIN should, if feasible, provide the client with a means of improving the design either by providing calibrated computational tools and/or by offering design services, he adds. “MARIN, by continuously innovating, should maintain its leading position in the field of marine model test- ing, computational tools, design verification, design improvement and advancement of the education of marine professionals.”


MARIN does an excellent job of carrying out specified model test programmes, he emphasises. “I am particularly impressed by the professionalism of the MARIN staff and the desire to do the job right no matter how long it takes, irrespective of whether a client is on site or not. This is a reputation which MARIN has earned and it is paramount this culture of excellence is maintained and reinforced.


“MARIN also has a leading position in com- putational fluid mechanics, covering signifi- cant aspects of the marine industry. And it is playing a leading role in disseminating the knowledge and the application of new computational tools to industry by offering focused courses.”


Challenges ahead In the future, Gurbachan points out that there are several areas that should continue to receive attention. Drill- ing, with a strong focus on environmental protection and having an incident-free work place continue to be important challenges, he stresses. “Transocean minimises the environmental footprint of its operations and continues to improve work place safety and it has an impressive record on both counts.”


In addition to the best practical environ- mental protection, the rig designs must be customised for the extreme cold weather climactic conditions of the Arctic region, says Gurbachan. These features include winterising and the use of construction ma- terials that can maintain their mechanical properties in such cold temperatures.


8 report


A critical element of the drilling unit design is the need for a robust station-keeping system that can maintain station in prevail- ing ice conditions during the seasonal win- dow for drilling operations. Considering the extremely random nature of the ice loads and potential for high forces, some sort of feed forward loop in the DP control system to compensate for the ice loads may be necessary. Recognising the technical diffi- culties of DP in ice, the 2009 Marine Tech- nology Society DP Conference in Houston organised a special session on Arctic DP.


He stresses that no ice model basin has yet carried out fully automatic DP model tests on a drilling unit. It would make a lot of sense for MARIN to partner with an ice


model basin to provide the DP control system know-how, he says.


Another area where MARIN could make a contribution is to offer time domain simu- lation services using MARIN’s aNySIMpro model of a drilling unit optimised from the open water DP model tests of the drilling unit. In particular, the ability of the model to accommodate client furnished environmen- tal loads, such as ice loads, could be very valuable.


Looking back over the last 40 years, there have certainly been many pioneering devel- opments. Both MARIN and Transocean will continue to innovate and play a role in any future developments.


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