Sunday 5 August 2018

Presentation at 36th OMAE, Trondheim, Norway

Hello Guys. It has been a while since last post. However, today I would like to share with you my experience of presentation at the 36th International Conference on ocean, offshore and arctic engineering (OMAE) during 25-30 June 2017. It has been a year since then, but what left in our memory is often precious, and that's what I am gong to share with you. The financial support from EU Horizon2020, TRUSS, Lloyd's Register (LR) towards my research is greatly appreciated.

I cannot remember how many attendances of the conference, but OMAE has been a top conference on ocean engineering since thirty years ago. The conference 2017 was held in Trondheim, Norway where there are a large research community on ocean engineering contributing to the offshore oil and gas industry and ocean farming in Norway. Another feature of conference 2017 was a symposium in honour of Prof Torgeir Moan, who is definitely a leading professor not least in marine structure and reliability methods. It was a nice symposium contributed by presentations by, e.g. Prof Carlos Guedes Soares, Prof Michael Faber, Prof John D Sorensen, Prof Weicheng Cui, Prof Inge Lotsberg, etc. Prof Cui was our director when I was with CSSRC, where I had been a research engineer on structural modelling, design and testing for nearly four years. Prof Faber hosted and supervised my secondment at Aalborg University during my PhD. It was nice to see them in Trondheim. 

I presented a paper on the development of a probabilistic fracture mechanics model for inspection planning (Fig 1). My presentation was delivered in the symposium on Structures, Safety and Reliability, chaired by Prof Yordan Garbatov. A good question received was that whether the developed method would be adopted by the ship design rules of LR. Well, it's hard to say, as ship design depends on trade-offs among many systems and performances. Invited by Prof Yordan Garbatov, I chaired the session on Fatigue Reliability during the 36th OMAE conference. As a chair, there was a small gift, a very nice book on the culture, history and landscape of Norway (Fig 2). 


Fig 1Discussion after my presentation
Fig 2 The gift for conference chairs (a book on Norway culture, history and landscape)
I took part in discussion in the sessions: factors affecting structural integrity, reliability of renewable energy systems, risk analysis and management, fracture control and fatigue analysis, reliability of marine structures, fatigue reliability and the Torgeir Moan honouring symposium. There are several keynote presentations on the big data and future of offshore energy, shipping and technology (Fig 3). The last day, I visited the testing facilities in SINTEF and Statoil. 


Fig 3 A keynote presentation on shipping 2025
Trondheim and Norway are nice places, refreshing, cosy and convenient for hiking (Fig. 4 and 5). Well, the wooden houses along the river reminds me of old towns in the Yangtze Rive Delta, China(Fig. 6). 

Fig 4 Wooden houses in Trondheim
Fig 5 A fjord in Norway

Fig 6 Wuzhen, China, an old town in Yangtze River Delta