Skip to content

Home > User Interface > Results Processing > Clearance Check > Defining clearance post-processing requests

Defining clearance post-processing requests

Clearance post-processing requests may be defined from the Request tab. The Request tab may include several load cases matrices, i.e. several groups of clearance post-processing instructions.

Note

Cases tabs may be used to group list of requests according to your needs. For instance you may group all post-processing requests related to a single riser pairing in the same Case tab.

The Request tab include 3 buttons as follows :

  • Add case: Creates a new Case tab in the Request tab. This group of requests is defined in a dedicated tab.

  • Delete case: Deletes selected Case tab. The tab defining the case will be removed from the Request tab.

  • Duplicate case: Duplicates selected Case tab. The name of this duplicated Case tab is set automatically based on the name of the selected Case tab.

Every Case tabs include both general parameters used to define the type of clearance to be reported in the Results tab and a Request table used to define all the load cases. The general parameters are as follows :

Case name:

The name of your load cases matrix. The name is used in the header of the Case tab.

Type of results:

The type of clearance results required for all post-processing requests included in the Case tab. Type of results is to be selected among the following :

  • Static snapshot clearance: The minimum clearance results will be reported for a single quasi-static step to be defined from the Select static step frame. This type of results is appropriate to derive the minimum clearances recorded between lines at a fixed static step.

  • Static envelop clearance: The minimum clearance results will be reported for a range of quasi-static step to be defined from the Select initial and final steps frame. This type of results is appropriate to derive the minimum clearances recorded between lines over a range of static steps.

  • Dynamic snapshot clearance: The minimum clearance results will be reported for a single time step to be defined from the Select time step frame. This type of results is appropriate to derive the minimum clearances recorded between lines at a fixed time.

  • Dynamic envelop clearance: The minimum clearance results will be reported for a range of times to be defined from the Select initial and final times frame. This type of results is appropriate to derive the minimum clearances recorded between lines over a range of times.

Clearance type:

Select whether the clearance values to be reported are centreline clearances or contact clearances. Centreline clearance is the clearance between mean lines, i.e. it does not take the external diameter of the lines into account. Contact clearance is the clearance between lines that takes into account the external diameter. Zero or negative contact clearances indicate clashing occurrences.

Requests number:

The number of post-processing requests in the selected Case tab.

Control points number:

Defines the number of points that will be distributed along the lines to report the clearance. The clearance between the lines is calculated based on control points located along the lines which may differ from the number of finite elements. High number of control points is recommended to get accurate clearance results.

Allowable clearance:

Defines the allowable clearance. Clearance values that will be found to be less than the acceptable clearance will be highlighted in red in the Results tab. This aims at enabling identification of critical load cases which infringes your design criteria. This parameter is however not used for the clearance calculation.

Requests table:

The Request table lists all clearance post-processing requests applicable to the selected Case tab. Each request is defined within a single row in the table. The number of rows is therefore directly driven by the number of requests defined in the general parameters. Each request from the Request table is defined through the following parameters :

  • Name: Name of the request. This enables identification of the load case.

  • Line Name (applicable to the first and second Lines): Name of the first / second Line to be considered for clearance post-processing.

  • Abscissa range (applicable to the first and second Lines): Range of curvilinear abscissa to be considered along the first / second Line for clearance post-processing. The minimum and maximum abscissa must be separated with a ; character. Instead of defining minimum and maximum abscissa, you may also select Whole line.

  • *.DSS filename (applicable to the first and second Lines): The name of the *.DSS file associated with the analysis including the first / second Line. The $CUR_PATH characters string may be used to refer to the working directory.

Note

The contents of the Request table may be copied to or pasted from an Excel spreadsheet.