David Kristiansen

Exposed Aquaculture in Norway

Farming of Atlantic salmon in exposed areas poses unique challenges to operations, structures and equipment due to severe and irregular wind, wave and current conditions, and sheer remoteness. Many of the operational challenges seen at present sheltered sites are likely to be amplified when moving production to more exposed locations. There is, however, a strong Norwegian industrial interest in utilizing such areas. A new research center, the Exposed Aquaculture Operations center has been initialized to develop competence and technology to address the challenges. Six core research areas are identified that will be crucial to address the challenges with exposed farming, with a focus on the industrial status in Norway. Four areas target technological innovations that will enable safe and reliable exposed aquaculture operations: 1) Autonomous systems and technologies for remote operations, 2) Monitoring and operational decision support, 3) Structures for exposed locations and 4) Vessel design for exposed operations. Two areas represent core requirements for sustainable production: 5) Safety and risk management and 6) Fish behavior and welfare. This paper describes the research needs and the research strategy planned for the Exposed Aquaculture Operations center.

Numerical Modeling of Wake Effect on Aquaculture Nets

Accurate modeling of drag forces on net cages due to water current is important when designing floating fish farm systems. These drag forces give a major contribution to the total environmental forces on a fish farm, especially mooring line forces. When subjected to current, the net cage will deform. High current velocities can result in large deformations and lead to collapse of the net cage. For circular fish farms with a flexible floating collar, large deformations may induce contact between the weighting system and the net, resulting in abrasion that can cause tearing of the net material and consequently failure that will lead to fish escape.The motivation for this paper is to obtain a better understanding and more accurate model for drag forces and corresponding deformations of circular net cages due to water current. Calculation of drag forces on a net cage is complicated due to the porous nature of the net, geometry and flexibility of the system. Adding to the complexity is the wake effect, or reduced velocity, behind each individual twine which will have a significant effect on the forces and deformations of the net cage. This wake effect will result in reduced inflow velocity on parts of the net being downstream.A method for estimating wake effects acting within an aquaculture net structure was developed and implemented in a numerical code taking net deformation into account. Numerical simulations of a cylindrical net cage were compared with experimental results. Comparison between simulations with and without wake effect revealed a reduction in total drag up to 22% when wake effect was applied. Although the model consistently overestimated drag forces on the net cage (average deviation of 25%), simulation results compared well with measurement data, particularly for low current velocities where deviations were as low as 7%. This indicates a consistent wake effect and drag model that produces conservative estimates of drag forces on net cages.Copyright

Modelling of Roll Damping Effects for a Fishing Vessel With Forward Speed

Vessels in the ocean-going fishing fleet are in general operating in almost all weather conditions. This includes operation in high sea-states which may lead to large amplitude ship motions, depending on the seakeeping characteristics of the vessel. Wave-induced ship motions are important factors for the safety and well-being of fishermen at work. Generally, potential flow theory overpredicts wave-induced roll motion amplitudes for conventional ship hulls. This is due to the presence of viscous damping effects in reality. Large amplitude roll motion of ships can be a real problem if no anti-rolling devices (e.g. bilge keels, anti-rolling tanks or roll-damping fins) are installed, as the roll damping coefficient of a ship is the limiting factor for the resonant roll motion amplitudes. The different components of roll damping for a ship at forward speed were investigated by Ikeda et al. [1], [2] and [3] and updated guidelines for numerical estimation of roll damping have been presented by the International Towing Tank Conference [4], where a component discrete type method for estimation of the damping is suggested. The different roll-damping components of Ikeda et al. has been complemented by skeg damping for smooth hulls [5]. This paper presents comparison between model experiments and the numerical results obtained from the guidelines [4] where the effects of bilge-keels and skeg are isolated.Copyright

Structural Analysis of Aquaculture Nets: Comparison and Validation of Different Numerical Modelling Approaches

The performance of three different numerical methods were compared and evaluated against data from physical model tests. A parameter study of a simplified net cage model subjected to a steady flow was performed by all methods, varying the net solidity and the flow velocity. The three numerical methods applied models based on springs, trusses or triangular finite elements. Hydrodynamic load calculations were based on the drag term in Morison’s equation and the cross-flow principle. Different approaches to account for wake effects were applied. In general, the presented numerical methods should be able to calculate loads and deformations within acceptable tolerance limits for low to intermediate current flow velocities and net solidities, while numerical analyses of high solidity nets subjected to high current velocities tend to overpredict the drag loads acting on the structure. To accurately estimate hydrodynamic loads and structural response of net structures with high projected solidity, new knowledge and methods are needed.Copyright

Simulation and Validation of a Numerical Model of a Full Aquaculture Net-Cage System

Numerical simulation models are useful tools for the design and capacity analyses of cage-based fish farm systems. To ensure that such tools produce realistic estimates on forces and deformations experienced by fish farms, it is important to validate the models through comparison with experiments. A recent experiment investigated the response of a scaled model of a full aquaculture net cage placed in a mooring system when exposed to waves and current. In this study, a numerical model of this system containing the main components used in the physical experiments was set up and simulated. After simulations the tension in anchor lines, bridles and buoys were compared to the corresponding data series obtained in the experiments. The comparison indicated that FhSim was able to reproduce the main dynamics and responses of the physical model when exposed to currents and waves. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis was conducted, aimed at investigating how much model output is affected by variations in the stiffness of the mooring system.Copyright

Environmental Description in the Design of Fish Farms at Exposed Locations

This paper addresses the description of exposure from waves and currents in coastal regions for design of marine fish farms. Representative descriptions of environmental conditions are important inputs to the design and dimensioning of reliable fish farm structures. A trend with moving production to more exposed sites and introduction of new and novel fish farm structures increase the need for more precise descriptions of the marine environment to keep control of uncertainties in design. Dedicated field measurements at two exposed aquaculture sites from February to December 2016 are presented. Results from statistical analyses of the measurement data demonstrate that common practice for characterization of exposure in design of fish farms has several deficiencies that should be improved to reduce uncer-

Classification of Aquaculture Locations in Norway With Respect to Wind Wave Exposure

In Norway there are a total of 1070 registered sites for salmon farming all along the coast. Trends in the aquaculture industry in the recent decade are that salmon farming sites tend to gradually relocate to more wave and current exposed locations. This trend is mainly motivated by the good water quality found in more exposed areas, as well as a lack of available sheltered locations. On the other hand, the increased exposure puts higher loads on the structures and this needs to be addressed by the development of more robust technology. The first step in order to address an increased exposure is to quantify the level of exposure of waves and current, and in this paper a method to easily estimate the level of wind wave exposure on a large number of sites are presented, and subsequently used to analyse all Norwegian sites.The method can be called fetch analysis, and use long term wind data connected with the fetch length in order to estimate wind wave conditions. The method is divided into four steps: 1) Fetch analysis, 2) Wind data, 3) Estimating wave parameters Hs and Tp and 4) Wave statistics. Significant wave height Hs with return period 1 year and 50 years are estimated for each site. Hs 50 year is often used for design, and the analysis shows that for 38% of the sites Hs 50 year exceeds 1 meter, for 17% of the sites Hs 50 year exceeds 1.5 meter, while 1.4% of the sites have Hs 50 year larger than 2.5 meter. The most exposed site has a Hs 50 year of 2.9 meter. Thus there are large differences in Hs 50 year in the various coastal regions of Norway.Copyright

A Numerical Study on Stratified Shear Layers With Relevance to Oil-Boom Failure

Interface dynamics of two-phase flow, with relevance for leakage of oil retained by mechanical oil barriers, is studied by means of a 2D lattice-Boltzmann method combined with a phase-field model for interface capturing. A Multi-RelaxationTime (MRT) model of the collision process is used to obtain a numerically stable model at high Reynolds-number flow. In the phase-field model, the interface is given a finite but small thickness where the fluid properties vary continuosly across a thin interface layer. Surface tension is modelled as a volume force in the transition layer. The numerical model is implemented for simulations with the graphic processing unit (GPU) of a desktop PC. Verification tests of the model are presented. The model is then applied to simulate gravity currents (GC) obtained from a lock-exchange configuration, using fluid parameters relevant for those of oil and water. Interface instability phenomena are observed, and obtained numerical results are in good agreement with theory. This work demonstrates that the numerical model presented can be used as a numerical tool for studies of stratified shear flows with relevance to oil-boom failure.

FHSIM — Time Domain Simulation of Marine Systems

Numerical time domain simulations have proven applicable for analysing marine systems and operations, but available tools often target specific sub-problems or applications associated with a system or an operation. Such tools are also often limited in terms of extensions and usage. This has motivated the development of FhSim at SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture (SFA). FhSim is a software framework aimed at simulating especially marine systems in the time domain, using models described as ordinary differential equations (ODEs).In this paper, we present the architecture and core functionality of the FhSim framework, including modelling, integration and 3D-visualisation. We also present a series of simulation cases which illustrate the different core properties of FhSim, including numerical simulations of aquaculture structures, model-based estimation of trawl nets and optimisation of energy systems in ships.Copyright