We aim to release a major OrcaFlex update in Q4 of each year. This year we are not going to achieve this goal, and version 11.1 will now be released early in 2021. We hope and expect that we will be able to do this in January or February.
The most significant new feature in 11.1 will be restart analysis. We are excited to be adding restarts, and development is very well advanced and progressing smoothly. However, it is such a broad feature, and impacts almost all existing functionality in the program, that development and testing has taken a long time. We considered releasing 11.1 without restarts in Q4 2020 to fit in with our schedule goals. We decided that it is preferable to delay the release a couple of months and ensure that restart analysis is included.
As well as delaying the OrcaFlex release, we have decided also to push the user group meetings into the new year. As previously announced these will be virtual because of the pandemic. Our intention is that these meetings will run around the same time as the OrcaFlex release.
The most significant new features to be included in version 11.1 are summarised below:
OrcaFlex
- Restart analysis
- Turbine blade pre-bend
- Turbine blade range graphs
- Direct input of vessel infinite frequency added mass
- Extended frequency domain results for vessels
- Wave time history component truncation threshold to improve wave time history performance
- Hysteretic and externally calculated line tension / torsion
- Modal mass / stiffness output
- Python scripts can be embedded in the model data rather than held in external files
- Better handling of panel mesh import for drawing
OrcaWave
- Further improvements to performance beyond those included in 11.0 minor releases
- Non-planar quad panels can be divided into two triangles on import
- New interior surface panel method for irregular frequency removal (performs better for large aspect ratio bodies)
- Improved drawing facilities
- Improved waterline detection
- Restrict QTF frequency combinations for performance
- Unidirectional QTFs
- Re-calculate displacement RAOs, QTFS, etc. without re-solving radiation / diffraction problem
- Roll damping can be specified as a percent of critical
- Damping calculated by stochastic linearised drag (not yet confirmed for inclusion in 11.1)