Bureau Veritas’ new guidance note supports the design of floating and fixed units

At sea, floating or fixed units can be exposed to strong environmental conditions, like wind, waves and currents. Leveraging over 30 years of hydrodynamics and hydro-structure interaction research, Bureau Veritas has developed NI 691 to cover all the important technical aspects in the design of these units.

Contributors from around the world – including universities, research institutes, shipyards, and design and engineering companies – collaborated to create NI 691. With their input, the guidance note comprehensively describes the most advanced theoretical and numerical models. NI 691 has been structured in line with Bureau Veritas’ dedicated software to facilitate application by users. These include: 

• HYDROSTAR for seakeeping
• ARIANE for mooring
• HOMER for structural response
• OPERA for marine operations

This new guidance note can be used in tandem with NI 638 (Guidance for long-term hydro-structure calculations) for the design of any floating structure. It employs direct calculation (i.a response-based design approach) – an increasingly common and harmonized practice to evaluate environmental loads and floating unit responses. Design and engineering firms may also take these guidance notes into consideration during the design process for optimizations.