Donatini, L.

Lataire, E.

Pribadi, A.B.K.

Vantorre, M.

Open Marine Archive

 107 
Cultivating mussels in the Belgian North Sea 
Pribadi Ajie Brama Krishna, Donatini Luca, Lataire Evert and Vantorre Marc 
Maritime Technology Division, Department of Civil Engineering, Ghent University, Technologiepark 
904, 9052 Ghent, Belgium 
E-mail: ajiebramakrishna.pribadi@UGent.be  
 
A research project to examine the feasibility of growing mussels off the coast was initiated within the 
project named Edulis. Two experimental test setups were proposed to be installed in the Belgian 
North Sea within the wind power park areas of C-Power and Belwind. The partners of Edulis project 
are: ILVO, UGent, OD Nature, C-Power, Belwind, DEME, Sioen Industries, Colruyt Group, Brevisco and 
Lobster Fish. In this collaboration, Maritime Technology Division of Ghent University takes part in the 
numerical modelling of the mussel line system. 
 
Two lines were installed in 2017: the bio-line (focussing on mussel growth) in the C-Power park and 
force line at the Belwind site. Mussel seeds attached in the bio-line and have grown into mussels. As 
for the force line, it was put into the water in November 2017 with grown mussels, and is equipped 
with measuring devices installed for the purpose of almost real time data gathering. These data will 
be used to calibrate parameters in the numerical predictions. 
 
The longline system is considered for the study in which the floating system consists of a long 
backbone line, collector lines and several buoys. Mussels will grow on the V-shaped collectors. Due 
to the specific restrictions in the wind power offshore park, movement of mussel line system is 
restricted to some limited extent in order not to interfere with the activities of the power companies 
within the wind power park. Hence, a mathematical model is needed to predict the behaviour of a 
mussel line based on its configuration and the environmental conditions. External parameters to be 
taken into account are waves, current, tide and growth of mussels (size and weight variations). 
An open source software written by Matthew Hall, namely MoorDyn, was used as a starting point to 
develop a code that is able to perform numerical predictions of mussel lines dynamics. The Fortran 
implementation of MoorDyn is meant to be coupled with an external code (FAST v8) to drive the 
motion [1]. MoorDyn is a complementary code specifically to calculate mooring dynamics of a floating 
system. 
In order to deal with modelling of mussel line system, many modifications have been implemented to 
the Fortran version of MoorDyn, which now can be used as a standalone software. These modifications 
include: implementation of current, regular and irregular waves as environmental loads, modelling of 
three degree of freedom buoys, capability to model an anchor as a clump weight and sea bed friction. 
The code itself is based on lumped mass model in which each line is divided into a discrete number 
of segments, whose physical properties are concentrated in points called nodes. Each node is subject 
to half of the forces and weight transferred from the two segments on each side. At each time step, 
acceleration of each node is computed by summing up all the calculated forces. The nodes velocity 
and position are computed by employing second order Runge-Kutta integration scheme [2]. At the 
end of a time step, each node has a new position, representing the new position of each of the 
contiguous segments. This translates into a new position of the whole mussel line system. The current 
version of the code is capable of predicting mussel line system dynamics due to environmental loads 
with the inclusion of a 3D visualization tool. Furthermore, modelling of several mussel line systems 
will be performed to find the most effective configuration to make use of the area provided. 
 
References 
 
[1] Hall, M., 2015. MoorDyn User’s Guide. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maine. 
[2] Hall, M., Goupee, A., 2015. Validation of a lumped-mass mooring line model with DeepCwind 
semisub-mersible model test data. In: Ocean Engineering Volume 101, Pages 590-603. 
 
Keywords: aquaculture; modeling; mooring; mussel 
  


Cultivating mussels in the Belgian North Sea

http://www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/311649.pdf

Cultivating mussels in the Belgian North Sea

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Open Marine Archive