Carlos Almeida

Numerical Offshore Tank (TPN-USP)

The Numerical Offshore Tank (TPN-USP) is a computational and experimental hydrodynamic laboratory for the design and analysis of offshore systems, ports, platforms, ships and barges. The lab involves the joint efforts of a multidisciplinary expertise team and close partnership among different universities, research institutes and oil companies. It is located in the main campus of the Escola Politécnica, at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil. Due to the extreme complexity of representing the actual physical phenomena and the requirement of being able to analyze a particular case in a reasonable and feasible time frame, the laboratory combines automated experimental facilities, high-performance computation and fully immersive simulators. The TPN lab facilities are: • A time-domain multi-body dynamic analysis software and a 3D visualization room for pos-processed analysis; • A 50 teraflops computer cluster composed by high-performance processors, enabling parallel computing to solve the numerical simulations; • A 14m x 14m x 4m hydrodynamic basin, the test facility with active wave generation/absorption. • A Ship Maneuvering Simulation Center, composed by 7 integrated simulators, being 2 of them classified as full-mission.