PANEL 4

Structural-geotechnical Interaction of Moorings of Floating Systems

Anchoring systems are key components of the support structure of floating platforms and their design includes many opportunities for innovation and challenges to delivering reliable performance. Mooring systems are known in the oil and gas industry to be a potential source of reduced reliability, and implementation of mooring systems for floating platforms will require deeper understanding of the interaction of structural and geotechnical behavior. Among the challenges to the design of new mooring systems, the following are prioritized for discussion in this panel: cyclic loading and soil uncertainty, optimization of mooring architecture, and mooring and anchor design for intermediate and shallow water depths.

Moderator: Sanjay Arwade (UMass Amherst)

Sanjay Arwade is a Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a research focus in offshore wind energy.  He studied Civil Engineering at Princeton and Cornell Universities and has been on the faculty at UMass for 12 years.  His research has been funded by the US National Science Foundation, the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and his work has been published in journals such as Renewable Energy, Wind Energy and Wind Engineering, among others.

Panelist #1: Franck Schoefs (University of Nantes)

Prof. Franck Schoefs, PhD, is Professor of Civil and mechanical EUniversité de Nantes, France since 2010. Former Student of Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan, Franck received his Ph.D. (1996) at Université de Nantes and his accreditation to supervise research (HDR) in 2007. He is the head of the TRUST Group (Monitoring, Reliability and Structural Computation at GeM), 40 people, since 2010 and CEO of the ‘Sea and Littoral Research Institute’ (650 researchers) since 2017. He advised President of Université de Nantes about the scientific strategie of Marine Renewable Energy since 2014 and is member of the board of West Atlantic Marine Energy Community since is foundation (2015). He is member of the Scientific Committee of the network of French Marine Universities (16 Universities). His main research field concerns reliability, inspection and maintenance of offshore structures including the modeling of degradation processes (corrosion, biofouling, ..).

Panelist #2: Thomas Langford (NGI)

Thomas Langford is Director for Offshore Energy at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute in Oslo, with 20 years’ of experience within the offshore industry, with a technical focus on the characterisation of seabed soils and the design of anchor and foundation systems for offshore facilities in water depths from 10 m to over 2000 m. Mr Langford is an active member of the ISO WG10/API RG7 committee for offshore geotechnical issues and also serves on the SUT/OSIG committee in Europe. As a practicing engineer and researcher, he has worked extensively on issues related to offshore wind and anchoring systems. He was involved in the design and installation of 32 suction anchors in the Massachusetts Bay LNG import terminals, and has otherwise been responsible for offshore project deliveries on 6 continents. Mr Langford is a strong supporter of the offshore wind industry in the USA, and keen to see the acceleration of floating wind technology. He sees great potential in the optimization of mooring systems, and anticipates large cost reductions in the market segment based on developments in the supply chain and high quality research activities across academia and the industry.

Panelist #3: Matthieu Dujon (LeBéon manufacturing)

Matthieu Dujon is in charge of export markets since September 2018 in forges Le Béon Manufacturing, particularly in charge of Marine renewable energies market development. Le Béon Manufacturing designs and produces connectors for anchoring and mooring floating structures.
Matthieu Dujon is graduated with a naval architecture diploma of Engineering “Yacht and Powercraft design” in 2008 at the Southampton Institute, supplemented with two masters specialized in project management at the University of Nantes.
He was also a marketing manager and in charge of export markets for the deployment of modular civilian and military buildings for five years, with several professional experiences in maritime environments.

Panelist #4: Pierrick De Belizal (INNOSEA)

Pierrick de Bélizal is in charge of structural analysis of Marine Renewable Energy units, at INNOSEA since 2017 (Nantes). He has a 7-year experience in offshore structural design, including fixed/floating offshore wind turbines foundations design.
He graduated with a Civil Engineering diploma (Ecole Centrale de Lyon / Heriot Watt University (Edinburgh), 2011) and a Maritime Engineering diploma (ENSTA ParisTech, 2012).
INNOSEA, now part of LOC Group, is an independent specialized engineering consultancy proposing its services to support the development offshore renewables energies. INNOSEA is strongly involved in supporting the floating offshore wind turbine industry development, by providing technical support to technology developers and participating in research programs. INNOSEA has developed expertise in assessing the dynamic behavior of complex coupled systems such as FOWT, for mooring systems design and optimization. INNOSEA, as part of LOC Group, also supports the industry with geotechnical expertise, from design and operational point of view.

Panelist #5: Leopoldo Bello (Vryhof)

Vryhof is a trusted partner to many of the offshore industry’s leading companies, delivering innovative and customer-focused anchoring and mooring solutions.
Leo Bello is Vryhof’s Managing Director. Commuting between Rotterdam and Houston he is responsible for company activities worldwide. He believes in partnering with clients to understand and expand solutions. Leo is personally committed to support the advancement of floating renewals and has been directly involved in several projects.
He is an Industrial Engineer specialized in Operations Research and Robotics and holds a Master on Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Panelist #6: Charles Aubeny (Texas A&M University)

Dr. Charles Aubeny is a Professor of civil engineering at Texas A&M University, specializing in geotechnical engineering. He is a licensed professional engineer in Texas, California and Colorado. He received a doctoral degree in civil engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992. Dr. Aubeny has held his current faculty position at Texas A&M University since 1999. His interests include offshore geotechnical topics such as deep water anchors, subsea risers and conductors, and subsea gravity foundations; as well as land-based problems associated with levee integrity, slope stability, excavations and retaining structures. He teaches courses and consults on topics in foundation engineering, slope stability and retaining walls, and numerical methods.