Empire Engineering has taken the wraps off a new design software for the development of foundations at offshore wind farms.
The tool, named Fathom, uses code designed in-house to support the primary steel design of monopile, jacket and gravity base foundations, the company said.
The kit was presented to delegates at Empire Engineering’s inaugural Foundation Ex conference in Bristol on Tuesday morning.
Empire has spent six months building the software, which will be commercially available from spring.
“We feel we have identified a gap in the capabilities of existing software,” said Nick Howard, partner and principle engineer at Empire Engineering.
The software runs from a web browser and allows developers to incorporate fabrication parameters into design calculations, he said.
Project developers key metocean, seabed and site data into the programme, which selects the best possible design for the foundations.
“We have designed it to quickly give feedback to save developers time while producing quality results,” Howard added.