Advances in fluid mechanics for offshore engineering: a modelling perspective.

Written by a group of international experts in their field, this Theme Issue provides an overview of the recent advances made by the fluid mechanics community dedicated to offshore engineering, with a specific focus into modelling issues. Although of great importance we have purposely neglected all applications related to ‘emerging offshore engineering’ concerned with renewable energy extraction (from waves, current and wind) and concentrated our attention on ‘classical offshore engineering’, i.e. that serving the naval and oil and gas industries. This distinction, which we admit is evident in the applications but vanishes with reference to the physics and solutions, appeared as essential to coherently organize the recent progress made in classical offshore engineering. Other topics that have been purposely neglected are related to internal pipe flow (though that is fluid mechanics of importance for offshore engineering) and the effects that ice has on offshore structures. In recent years, some significant works have summarized the state of the art in the field (e.g. [1]) and in related topics, such as seabed morpho-dynamics (e.g. [2]), wave impact on walls (e.g. [3]), fluid–structure interactions (e.g. [4]) and freak oceanic waves (e.g. [5]). However, the continuing and recent progress of the applications—e.g. increasing variety of sea structures and ships involved in transportation, increasing extension of oil and gas exploration areas, etc.—unendingly bring to attention new challenges in the description of the physics and modelling. Hence, the need to update the state of the art in fluid mechanics modelling for offshore engineering.