From 16 to 18 February, the 2023 Symposium on Wave loads on Ship and Offshore Structures & COMPASS-WALCS Software Users' Annual Meeting, co-sponsored by Harbin Engineering University, China Classification Society, and the Ministry of Education's Joint Laboratory for International Cooperation in Ship and Ocean Engineering Technology, was held in the Teachers Salon of the Qihang Activity Centre.

This conference is one of the series of academic activities for the 70th anniversary of Harbin Engineering university, aiming to promote the theory and method of wave loads on ships and offshore structures to strengthen the exchanges between scholars and researchers on the calculation of wave loads and their applications, and to increase the application and promotion of COMPASSWALCS, a suite of codes jointly released by China Classification Society (CCS) and Harbin Engineering University (HEDU) for the calculation of wave loads on ship and offshore structures.

COMPASS-WALCS is the first set of commercial codes developed and released in China for the calculation of wave loads on ships and offshore structures in China, which was jointly developed by the research group of Environmental Load & Structural Strength and China Classification Society (CCS). The suite 5 modules: basic module for the calculation of ships and offshore structures, three-dimensional linear hydroelastic analysis, nonlinear hydroelastic analysis, floating body and mooring system and riser coupling analysis and three-dimensional fully nonlinear time-domain analysis. The suite has been applied to the design and development of "Offshore Oil 981" drilling platform, various types of large ships, ultra-large container ships and ore carriers. There are now more than 200 users in the industry.