Ocean Engineering
The oceans have long been recognized as an essential part of our global environment. Covering more than 70 percent of the earth's surface, the oceans affect all life on earth directly as well as indirectly. Ocean Engineering involves the development, design, and analysis of man-made systems that can operate in the offshore or coastal environment. Such systems may be used for transportation, recreation, fisheries, extraction of petroleum or other minerals, and recovery of thermal or wave energy, among others. Some systems are bottom-mounted, particularly those in shallower depths; others are mobile, as in the case of ships, submersibles, or floating drill rigs. All systems should be designed to withstand a hostile environment (wind, waves, currents, ice) and to operate efficiently while staying environmentally friendly.
Ocean Engineering study as a major field of study within Mechanical Engineering requires satisfying core requirements in marine hydrodynamics and marine structures. Individuals are expected to have undergraduate background similar to upper-division courses ME164 (Marine Statics & Structures), and ME 165 (Ocean-Environment Mechanics), which can be used as as credit for the graduate program. Disciplines supporting ocen engineering include materials and fabrication, control and robotics, continuum mechanics, dynamical system theory, design methodology, mathematical analysis, and statistics. The graduate sequence ME240 and ME241 are core offerings that provide the necessary background for performing rational analysis of marine systems, fixed or mobile. Ocean Engineering can also be used as a minor subject with one of the discipline areas as major.
Significant laboratories used for both instruction and research include the
Computational Marine Mechanics Laboratory (CMML) and the Richmond Model-Testing Facility (RFS). Contemporary research issues include: vortex and free surface interaction, roll-motion damping and dynamics of ships, dynamic positioning of mobile offshore bases, hydroelastic behavior of floating airports, waves in a two-layer fluid, high-speed multi-hull configuaration optimization, marine composite materials, reliability-based structural design, fatigue behavior of marine materials, Bragg scattering of waves, computational methodologies for nonlinear waves, tsunami propagation, and alternative renewable energy: floating offshore wind park, ocean wave and tidal energy, loads on floating turbines.
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Radisson Seven Seas (a Multihull reality) |
Wet-bench energy tests (RFS) |
Faculty members involved with the Ocean Engineering field are M. R. Alam, C. K. H. Dharan, J. K. Hedrick, D. Lieu, A. Mansour, H. Kazerooni, A. Packard, O. Savas, and R. W. Yeung.
Professor Yeung is the Major Field Advisor for Ocean Engineering for the Fall 2011 semester
Professor Mansour is the Major Field Advisor for Ocean Engineering for the Spring 2012 semester
Annual SNAME Get-Together of UC-Berkeley Ocean Graduates (Houston, November 18, 2011)
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