ABS unveiled a new version of the ABS SafeHull system at the Marintec China maritime exhibition and conference in Shanghai last December. The latest release, SafeHull Express, has been created to assist design engineers and shipyards develop approved tanker designs more quickly and simply. It has been developed in close cooperation with shipyard designers, several of whom participated as members of the development team, and in conjunction with NAPA and MSC Software, providers of design related software to designers and shipyards worldwide. A version for double hull bulk carriers will be released in the spring of 2004.

To meet shipyard requirements for 3-dimensional CAD systems for production design and manufacturing, SafeHull Express brings the benefits of 3D into the earliest stages of the design cycle helping to speed-up the design process. The system provides easy to use templates to generate geometry and scantlings of the main hull structures, building a 3-dimensional hull structure automatically, and smoothly integrating user friendly 2-D views with 3-D modeling.

Building a 3-D hull structural model in the early design stage can provide more accurate estimates of material and construction cost, helping the shipyard to prepare bidding contracts. The structural model is automatically converted to a finite element model without requiring any manual data entry, resulting in a seamless integration from initial scantlings design to a finite element analysis required as part of the total strength assessment that is mandatory for SafeHull Rules. Large finite element models can be built in minutes by taking advantage of SafeHull Express’ computing power and ability to repeat structures. Automating a 3-D structural model to a finite element model properly meshed and loaded is a significant time saver for the design process and a powerful SafeHull Express feature. The software also provides an automated report generation system to help designers make certain the design is in compliance with Class Rules. On completion of the analysis, the users can select the items they wish to put into the final report for both initial scantling evaluation and total strength assessment. This is another significant time-saver for the designer. The system automatically generates the report including all the graphics selected.