OrcaFlex User Group 2008

In 2008 the OrcaFlex User Group returned to seven venues: Paris, Perth, Kuala Lumpur, Houston, Stavanger, Rio and Aberdeen. We had over 200 attendees – thank you all for coming and helping to make the events such a success. It was lovely to see lots of familiar faces and to match faces to some we've known only as names.

The feedback response was excellent again with most people handing or posting their forms to us – thank you. Your thoughts and ideas are always welcome (at any time!) and always noted. The comments were constructive, informative and invaluable as usual. For information, short and medium term developments for OrcaFlex can be found at the OrcaFlex Support page.

The feedback in brief:

• Attendees found the meetings informative and useful. The mix of Orcina presentations, Guest Speakers and Worked Examples were still popular.
• The presentation explaining the recent developments in OrcaFlex and future development was well received. Most of the new features were a direct result of requests from the previous user group meetings. We hope you find the new features useful.
• Reflecting the majority of support questions we receive, an Orcina presentation was given that ran through the statics theory and how to generate a stable solution. Feedback showed this was very welcome.
• The Orcina presentation on Fatigue Analysis generated a lot of discussion from the floor on statistical methods and regular wave versus irregular wave analysis. It seems this is a hot topic at the moment.
• There was also an Orcina presentation on pipelay. It concentrated on S-lay but the methods would work equally for J-lay. The models considered range from the very simple to the extremely complicated, depending on what the user needs to get out of the study. There was a big demand for copies of these models in advance of upload to the website, a first for our UGM.
• We changed the final example session this year, giving it more time and mixing longer worked examples with little hints and tips and a bit of theory. This mix proved very popular with most choosing to stay past the scheduled finish in those locations where the schedule over-ran. Again there was a demand for advanced copies of models so this is clearly a popular mix.

Again we included guest speakers that are also OrcaFlex users. They were very successful and we will be continuing with this practice. Thank you to our six guest speakers who took time out of their busy schedules to prepare and present: Simon Lorelli (Saipem), Paul Jacob (MMI Engineering), Jørgen Reine (Subsea7), Faisal Hijazi (Prosafe), Kjetil Gjøystdal (Technip) and Eldho Paul (Subsea7).

Planning is already underway for the 2009 meetings and we look forward to seeing you all again.

2008 User Group Meeting Presentations

The presentations (including associated data and simulation files) can be downloaded individually using the links below:

FatigueAnalysis.zip (2.7 MB)
Pipelay.zip (701 KB)
WorkedExamples.zip (1.4 MB)

Alternatively you can download all presentations in the single ZIP file below:

UserGroupPresentations.zip (4.7 MB)