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QinetiQ’s Paramarine Ship Design Software used by Mojo Maritime in the design of an award winning offshore renewables support vessel

QinetiQ’s Paramarine Ship Design Software used by Mojo Maritime in the design of an award winning offshore renewables support vessel

Paramarine, QinetiQ’s ship and submersible design software has been used by Mojo Maritime to design an offshore construction vessel, for the marine renewables sector. The Hi Flo 4 (HF4) is a state-of-the-art, high-performance, dynamic positioning vessel capable of operating in extreme coastal and continental shelf environments, designed with the support of InnovateUK (formerly the Technology Strategy  Board).

Such has been the success of the project that Mojo Maritime recently won the Best Tidal Industry Collaboration Award at the 8th International Tidal Energy Summit for its leadership of the HF4 R&D consortium, comprised of Voith, Bauer Renewables, DNV GL and University of Exeter.

The HF4 has been developed, through a series of patented concepts, to address the installation and through-life engineering and operational design challenges inherent in tidal energy projects. The ship will be able to reduce the cost of installing tidal energy farms, and is likely to play a key role in industrialising tidal energy, both in UK and internationally. The vessel is designed to operate, using dynamic positioning, in tidal streams of up to 10 knots, and will be able to install tidal farms in half the time and at a third of the cost of conventional methods.

“Paramarine’s extensive range of capabilities, including the probabilistic damage analysis module, which is essential for the design of offshore construction vessels, has underpinned the HF4 design process. The result is a novel but highly efficient and effective offshore construction vessel, capable of installing foundations, cables, subsea connectors and turbines in the widest range of wind, wave and tidal conditions," said Simon Hindley, Naval Architect, Mojo Maritime Ltd.

Paramarine is based on over 25 years' experience in marine design. Thousands of concept vessels have been modelled and their stability analysed using Paramarine. Paramarine is used by many of the world's leading commercial and naval shipbuilders and ship and submarine designers such as Rolls Royce, Babcock, BAE and Navantia, Newport News as well as some leading universities including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University College London.

“Developing the design of such an innovative and complex vessel such as the HF4 has further demonstrated the capabilities that Paramarine delivers in a wide range of maritime scenarios. Specifically it shows that Paramarine has the required functionality to support the design of offshore service vessels," commented Gareth Draper, Deputy Managing Director, Marine Design Software, QinetiQ.