About Sesam

Sesam is a software suite for hydrodynamic and structural analysis of ships and offshore structures. It is based on the displacement formulation of the finite element method.

We have made separate pages on some specific Sesam progams, such as

The Sesam Feature Description (PDF, last revised: March 12. 2019) gives an in-depth description of Sesam and all it's features. Most of the information provided here originates from this document, and will be referenced by "SFD + pagenumber(s)". We highly recommend you to take a look at this document if you want to learn more about Sesam.





How to download and install Sesam

If you are downloading several Sesam programs, it is highly beneficial to download the Application Version Manager and the Sesam Manager which keeps track of all installed programs such that they can be located by other DNV GL applications.

  • License: To licence any DNV software, visit NTNU Software's page on DNV and follow the instructions.
  • Install Sesam software:
    • Recommended: The Sesam programs can easily be downloaded from this page (64-bit, but notice switch to 32-bit at page, as some software are not in 64-bit). To licence the software, follow the instructions above.
    • Sesam programs may also be downloaded using the other methods described at DNV.




Getting started with Sesam

Considering the large number of programs included in the Sesam package, it will take you some time to understand what all the different programs do and when to use them. To help you out, we have gathered some of the most useful information when first getting started with Sesam.

Hardware recommendations

Sesam is supported on Windows 7 and 10 (64-bit).

(SFD 14-15)

Sesam programs overview

Sesam consist of four groups of programs: preprocessors, hydrodynamic analysis programs, structural analysis programs and postprocessors, which are bound together by a set of Sesam Interface Files, the green “H” in the figure.

Sesam Manager at top of the figure is the master control program of Sesam. Analysis workflows including any of the Sesam programs and of any complexity may be set up and run.

(SFD, 5)