Summary Postprocessing Collation |
 
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Summary Postprocessing Collation |
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As discussed in the preceding section, Flexcom provides a powerful facility for generating a Summary Output File. For any given analysis, the maximum value, the minimum value, the range of values and the standard deviation of values is tabulated for a group of parameters you specify.
If you are performing a series of analyses (for example to examine a large number of different load cases), the Summary Postprocessing Collation facility provides a useful means of assembling all the pertinent summary data across a range of load cases into a single Summary Collation Spreadsheet. Enhanced data visualisation is also provided by the ability to produce 3-dimensional Summary Collation Plots. You can plot the variation of any summary postprocessing output against any key driving parameters. For example, you can plot maximum effective tension as a function of both wave period and incident wave heading in a 3-dimensional space.
Summary collation is an extremely useful feature which is very easy to use. There are a number of logical steps involved in the process.
•Firstly, you need to explicitly request the creation of summary output from the individual simulations. Numerous keywords are contained in the $SUMMARY POSTPROCESSING section, allowing you to extract pertinent results. For example, you could use the *PARA FORCE ENVELOPE keyword to request summary output of statistics of element restoring forces. Or you could use the *STANDARD OUTPUT keyword to quickly request a selection of commonly used outputs. After a simulation has completed, Flexcom produces a text-based Summary Output File for visual inspection, but more importantly it also creates a Summary Database File, which is effectively a binary version of the same data, for subsequent collation.
•Secondly, you also need to define one or more key parameters which uniquely identify each individual simulation within a load case matrix. For example, wave period and wave direction would be defining parameters in a regular wave load case matrix, and serve as ideal parameters for identification purposes. Identifiers must be explicitly defined via the *COLLATE PLOT AXES keyword.
•Thirdly, you request the collation of parameters of interest across the entire load matrix (or a subset of it). The $SUMMARY COLLATE section contains a number of relevant keywords, such as *IDENTIFY which nominates the folders of interest on your hard drive. After the collation process, Flexcom produces a very helpful Summary Collation Spreadsheet, which assembles all the important data into a single location, providing you with a dashboard view of critical design parameters.
•Finally, it also possible to request the creation of Summary Collation Plots for enhanced data visualisation. Specifically, you can plot the variation of any summary postprocessing output against any key driving parameters. For example, you can plot maximum effective tension as a function of both wave period and incident wave heading in a 3-dimensional space.
Further information on this topic is contained in the following sections:
•Summary Collation Spreadsheet
•Numerous keywords are contained in the $SUMMARY COLLATE section, which allows you to collate the summary postprocessing results across a range of different time domain analyses.
If you would like to see an example of how these keywords are used in practice, refer to J03 - Summary Collation.