Key characteristics
BIOCALMAR will provide:
- a long-term probabilistic model of biofouling growth for offshore industries
- It considers the specifications of installation site
- It can help offshore engineers to optimize the design as well as the maintenance program costs of offshore structures.
- The model could be updated from new inspection data
Functionalities and services
BIOCALMAR proposes a probabilistic model in order to estimate the extent and amount of biofouling in long term. It deals with the optimization the cost of the design and the maintenance of offshore structures.
Example of MRE applications
Marine growth is an inevitable phenomenon covering offshore structures in a short time after the installation.
Their appraisal and colonization have many harmful effects on offshore structures and their periodical cleaning is an expensive operation. The convenience is more important for Marine Renewable Energy market. Indeed, the construction, operation and maintenance cost of MRE devices will affect the final price of the energy. BIOCALMAR employs a stochastic method based on Gamma process in order to predict the biofouling appraisal and growth rate in long-term, It applies periodical inspections data performed on offshore structures to construct a meta model. The software proposes a probabilistic model which deals with a multidisciplinary method from marine biology to hydrodynamic calculation.
BIOCALMAR deals with the optimization of the design and maintenance of MRE devices. Due to the site-specific characteristics of the biofouling, there is a need to model biocolonization for each installation site and BIOCALMAR provides aforementioned model. Furthermore, it is envisaged to provide a library for dominant marine organisms for different typical geographical locations and materials. BIOCALMAR allows optimizing the maintenance programs and consequently the energy price. Moreover, It can update the model with the last inspection data in order to minimize the estimation errors.
Figure 1. The cleaning scenarios of offshore structures proposed by BIOCALMAR
Figure 2. The evolution of probability density of yielding stress and failure probability over the time life of offshore structures
Figure 2. The evolution of probability density of yielding stress and failure probability over the time life of offshore structures