ONS is an oceanographic consultancy firm based in Perth Western Australia. Offshore Numerical Solutions specializes in the application of numerical models to the natural environment with the aim of minimizing risk in the offshore sector. Our vision is to provide quality numerical hindcast data and information to service the offshore sector. Through application of advanced numerical models, our team is able to reproduce ambient and extreme conditions.
Hydrodynamic Modelling
Hydrodynamic modelling includes the application of 3d regional ocean models to reproduce the historical climate. The models are forced on the surface with atmospheric conditions such as wind stress, heat exchange. On the open boundaries nested solutions for regional conditions and included and tidal forcing to resolve internal waves.
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The output from the models may be either point specific output at a range of water depths, or regional output for input into third party applications such as oil spill response models, environmental models.
Wave Modelling
The generation of site specific wave climates is an important consideration for offshore operability assessments. In addition, the wave climate is essential for nearshore operations and sediment mobilization. ONS uses a variety of spectral wave models ranging from global applications, to smaller scale models for port and harbour design and analysis.
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ONS has developed in-house databases suitable for point or gridded data extraction and analysis. Typical output includes parameterized wave data (significant wave height, period, direction), 2d spectral wave data as required.
Weather Analysis
Through application of advanced mesoscale weather models such as WRF (Weather Research Forecasting) model, ONS is able to simulate complicated historical weather patterns. The output from these models is used to interact and force regional ocean and wave models.
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In addition they are used to gain a greater understanding of the atmospheric physics for more extreme events such as individual tropical cyclones.
Extreme Events
Extreme events (including cyclones) offer significant challenges in the offshore industry not only in terms of design criteria, but also operability and risk management. Each location contains site specific conditions and ONS is able to tailor our methodology depending on project needs and requirements.
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Through the application of weather, wave and ocean models, ONS is able to provide hindcast data and information to support site specific extreme event analysis.
Computational Fluid Dynamics
Computational Fluid Dynamics (or CFD) involves solving the Navier Stokes equations to gain improved understanding of complicated hydrodynamic conditions including breaking wave states, wind loading and fine resolution time domain simulations.
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When coupled with existing analysis methods, CFD may improve the confidence, knowledge and assist in reducing risk and costs uncertainty when working in offshore environments.
Regional Ocean Forecasting
For the Australian North West Shelf, ONS has developed a regional ocean forecasting system based on the ROMS ocean model. The spatial scale of the model is 1/20th degree (~ 5km) and producing full three dimensional ocean forecasts out to 5-7 days at a 0.5hr temporal resolution.
