I am writing this message with a heavy heart as I think about our friend and colleague Terry Jones, who passed away November 19 after a long battle with kidney and liver disease.  He was 71. I first met Terry at the OMAE 1985 meeting in Dallas.  We were both on our own and somehow ended up having dinner together.  I next met Terry at a local OMAE chapter meeting in Houston, right after I moved here in 2000.  As was his way, he talked me into helping out with the local chapter.  Later, he nominated me for the OOAE Executive Committee and here I sit as the current Chairman. Throughout Terry’s career he was a supporter, promoter and advocate for ASME, the Pipeline Division and OMAE. He was there at the beginning of the Houston OMAE Technical Chapter in 1984.  As a prime mover in the student intern program with the Chapter, he was on a mission to find college students and place them in summer jobs with the offshore industry. He was an insightful student interviewer and judge of character. One of his colleagues told me “Terry could see inside a person what that person was most gifted at.”  He would match students with the right company. He later took the lead in organizing the short courses on TLP Design sponsored by the Chapter in the 1990s. He was still helping with our short courses in 2002 and 2003. When I was Chapter Chairman a few years ago he still participated in meetings whenever he could and volunteered to help out, ex-officio. On the international level, Terry was on the OMAE Executive Committee, and instigated and led the highly successful Pipeline Symposium, which is a permanent part of the annual OMAE conference. Terry was a quiet, unassuming guy, who didn’t seek glory, but he always was worth listening to and he was always ready to help out.  There has been an outpouring of good will from Terry’s colleagues from a great career at Exxon and in the OOAE family, and I would just like to add my voice to chorus.

Figure 1 Terry Jones Reading to his Granddaughter Becky (courtesy of Jim Brekke)

The OOAE Division has two primary activities: publication of the Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering (JOMAE), and its annual OMAE technical conference, one of the best resources for discovering what’s new in the world of ocean, offshore and arctic Engineering. 

The Journal (http://www.omae.org/jomae/jomae.html) is published quarterly and contains the latest research in the offshore and arctic engineering fields. Stephen Liu (sliu@mines.edu) is the editor.  If you don’t subscribe or normally don’t have access to the Journal, you can sign up to receive the Table of Contents by email each quarter to keep up on what’s being published.  You can also access the Table of Contents and order papers over the web.

The OMAE Conference is much lower key than the OTC Conference, which is co-sponsored by the Petroleum Division of IPTI. I would say the OMAE Conference is more research focused, allowing a forum for academic and industrial scientists and engineers to exchange ideas on the latest R&D issues.  OTC has a broader project and product focus, as illustrated by the large exhibition.  OMAE has a very small exhibition, which is generally limited to software venders and R&D service companies. We don’t display big iron! Visit our web site, http://www.ooae.org/omae/omaeconf.html, for the latest on past, present and future conferences (thanks to our webmaster, Cengiz Ertekin!).  

The 2005 OMAE conference was held this June in the beautiful coastal area of Porto Caras, Halkidiki, Greece.  The Technical Program Chair was Prof. Michael Bernitsas, and Prof. Spyros Mavrakos was the Conference Chair of this highly successful conference, which was attended by over 400 participants.  355 refereed papers were presented and included in the proceedings. A highlight of the conference for me was the opening Calvin W. Rice Award Lecture "Vortex-Induced Vibration of Ocean Structures" by Professor Peter Bearman, Imperial College, London.  Professor Bearman presented a succinct summary of the numerical and experimental research being conducted in this field.  My first encounter with VIV problems was back in 1972 when I began my career working on deep ocean mining – towing a pipe through the ocean – and it is amazingly still as much a concern today!  The conference even inaugurated the first specialty OMAE symposium dedicated to VIV and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics), thanks to Dr. Owen Oakley of Chevron.  It was a great success and this specialty symposium will be continued in 2006. 

Figure 2 Professor Bearman presenting the Calvin V. Rice Lecture at OMAE 2005

Figure 3 OOAE Chairman Dan Valentine presenting the Lifetime Achievement Award to Subrata Chakrabarti

Another specialty symposium, organized by Denby Morrison of Shell, dealt with Challenges Facing the LNG Fleet and Terminals.  This is becoming the new frontier for the offshore industry, and has been an important theme for the Conference in the past few years.  Besides the specialty symposia, we maintained the seven regular symposia tracks: offshore, safety and reliability, materials technology, pipeline technology, ocean space utilization, ocean engineering and polar/arctic technology. As usual, I found it difficult at times to decide which session to attend, as there were invariably overlapping sessions of mutual interest to me.  I suggest you look over the technical program at http://www.asmeconferences.org/OMAE05/TechnicalProgramOverview.cfm and get a copy of the proceedings CD available from the ASME web site (http://catalog.asme.org/home.cfm?Category=CP).  I have found browsing through old OMAE (and OTC) CDs a great way to keep up on the happenings in offshore technology when I’m traveling or working abroad!

OMAE 2006 (http://www.asmeconferences.org/omae06/), under the leadership of Walter L. Kuehnlein and Dan Valentine, is shaping up as another huge success.   Walter will host the conference in Hamburg, Germany, June 4 – 9, 2006.  Incidentally, June 9 corresponds with the beginning of the 2006 World Cup in Germany.  The first match in Hamburg is June 15. Book your hotel early (those of us in the states can’t really comprehend the magnitude of this event, but be forewarned).  Also, since this is the 25^th OMAE Conference, there are some special events scheduled to reflect on the past quarter century of offshore technology. 

Dan Valentine reports that we now have over 500 abstracts accepted which portends for an outstanding technical program.  This year, there are four (!) specialty symposia in addition to the seven regular symposia mentioned above.  The specialty symposia include: CFD/VIV, Offshore Wind Energy, Ocean Research Technology and a special symposium in honor of Professor Douglas Faulkner on the Reliability and Ultimate Strength of Marine Structures.  Offshore Wind Energy is a growing industry in Europe as limited real estate on land limits the number and size of wind “farms”.  Ocean Research Technology refers to the components, systems and services used to support oceanographic research.   Professor Douglas Faulkner has had an illustrious career focused, in part, on the safety and reliability of plated steel structures. As an educator and researcher at the University of Glasgow he has had a major influence on the current generation of engineers and the procedures for ship design. Towards the end of his career, Professor Faulkner was involved in some of the re-examination of the sinking of the bulk carrier m.v Derbyshire. This led to a particular interest in abnormal waves and their consequences, an activity that generated a wider concern and thus further investigations into such events. As has been our tradition, we have invited former students and colleagues of Prof. Faulkner to present papers at this specialty symposium. 

We are also pleased that another illustrious scientist, Professor Turgut Sarpkaya, will deliver a keynote lecture, this one on “Hydrodynamic Damping: Theoretical, Numerical and Experimental Facts”.  Like Professor Bearman’s talk on VIV at OMAE 2005, this promises to be an enlightening lecture on a subject that seems to continuously plague all of us in the offshore engineering world (coincidentally, Professor Sarpkaya recently published a definitive review of VIV research in the Journal of Fluids and Structures, v. 19, 2004).  I personally find it stimulating to meet and exchange ideas with those on the forefront of research in these subjects, and hope that you will join us in Hamburg this June.  Finally, OMAE 2006 is featuring a special workshop on “Pendulum Deployment of Deepwater Manifolds”. Workshops are “presentation only” sessions and present an opportunity to learn about the latest developments before they have matured enough to allow publication.

Figure 4 Professor Turgut Sarpkaya will Deliver a Keynote Lecture on "Hydrodynamic Damping, Theoretical, Numerical and Experimental Facts” at OMAE 2006 in Hamburg

Figure 5 The Port of Hamburg will Host the OMAE 2006, June 4-9.

Figure 6 Offshore Wind Energy will be the Subject of a Specialty Symposium at OMAE 2006.

Before leaving conferences I should put in a special plug for OMAE 2007, which I am honored to Chair in my hometown, San Diego, California.  This will be held June 10 – 14, 2007 at the Paradise Point Resort on Mission Bay.  This will be the first OMAE Conference to be organized by IPTI and I am looking forward to working with Manny Mones, Lisa Elliot and the crew on this one. It will also be the first OMAE Conference in the United States since Terry Jones Chaired the 2000 Conference in New Orleans.

While the OMAE Conference is the Division’s main activity, I am pleased to report that Jon Mikkelsen of the University of British Columbia has agreed to head up our recently dormant Student Contest & Scholarship Committee. He will be meeting with others of like mind at our winter Extended Executive Committee meeting, Feb. 3, to reactivate our scholarship and student contest activities. These activities are complemented by our participation, together with SNAME, in the International Student Offshore Design Competition (http://www.isodc.com).  We hope to have more information on this activity in the next newsletter.  If you are interested in helping put this program together, contact Jon at mikk@mech.ubc.ca.   We hope with Jon’s enthusiasm and those on his committee, Bob Randall, Mike Bernitsas, Charles Dalton and Mehernosh Irani, that we can provide a boost in the interest of Mechanical Engineering students to enter the offshore world.

John Halkyard