ALGOR FEA Helps North American Shipbuilding Hoist 1,000 Tons
Located along the intercoastal waterway in Larose, Louisiana, North American Shipbuilding (NAS) designs and constructs offshore vessels
for its parent company, Edison Chouest Offshore (ECO), and affiliated companies.
As part of its ship building and repairing operations, NAS uses finite element analysis (FEA) software from ALGOR, Inc. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
"ALGOR FEA allows us to check our first principal calculations as well as investigate more detailed problems," said Jacob Cheramie,
Naval Architect of NAS.
For example, when a new anchor-handling tug supply vessel was built,
a 1,000-ton superstructure needed to be lifted by cranes for installation on the hull.
Engineers at NAS performed ALGOR linear static stress analyses of key components
to ensure that the ship could withstand the forces generated during the lifting operation.
The FEA stress and displacement results verified NAS' calculations,
which allowed NAS to proceed with confidence and execute the crane lift successfully.
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ALGOR FEA Helps Engineers Energize Solar Cells
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, photovoltaic power will be competitive in price with traditional sources of electricity within 10 years.
Contributing to this trend, Solar Power Industries, Inc. (SPI) of Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania, uses finite element analysis (FEA) software
from Pittsburgh-based ALGOR, Inc. as a tool for developing faster, more efficient and less expensive ways to manufacture solar cells.
For example, SPI used ALGOR FEA to analyze the process of casting silicon ingots inside a directional solidification furnace.
"These ingots are used to manufacture photovoltaic solar cells," said Chenlei Wang, Ph.D., Senior Engineer with SPI.
"ALGOR multiphysics software helped us in optimizing the furnace's hot-zone design, which was the key factor for the project."
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