New partners joined the Open Simulation Platform (OSP) initiative that was launched at the Norwegian Maritime Competence Centre in Norway on March 20. In July last year Rolls-Royce Marine, The Norwegian University of Technology Science (NTNU), research organisation SINTEF Ocean, and classification society DNV GL signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the aim of creating an open source digital platform for use in the development of new ships. With the launch of the project the founding partners are inviting more participants to harness the possibilities that exists from working with “digital twins”.
A digital twin is a digital copy of a real ship, including its systems, which synthesizes the information available about the ship in a digital world. Using digital twins enable optimization of a ship’s design, maintenance, production and sustainability throughout its entire lifecycle.
Among the new Joint Industry Partners to the OSP are the companies Hyundai Heavy Industries, Kongsberg Digital and the Offshore Simulator Centre.
“OSP is a joint industry project where the goal is to establish a maritime industry standard for models and system simulation, a standard that will allow companies to reuse simulation models and construct digital twins of existing and future vessels in a safe and more cost-efficient way, said Jon Rysst, SVP and Regional Manager for North Europe at DNV GL - Maritime.
“Through working together in a virtual environment, we can achieve a larger degree of interaction between different systems and its owners. We can also avoid that individual businesses and developers spend a lot of time on their own testing systems in isolation, without having the opportunity to test how it actually will interact in operation with other systems,” said Professor Hans Petter Hildre from NTNU.
The project partners will create a collaboration platform that is open for use by other parties, with core aspects built on an open source framework. The platform is also being designed to support model libraries for storing simulated ship concepts, systems and equipment.
A prototype of the OSP is already running with a simulated vessel and a DP system conducting a dynamic positioning operation. This particular prototype also uses cloud technology to enable teams in different locations to work together to optimize system design and vessel performance, verify correct handling of failures within the control system of the vessel’s automated positioning system, and verify system changes and the operational impact they may have before a change is deployed to the actual vessel.
One of the first projects to utilise the new tool is being led by Rolls-Royce Marine. The company intends to create a digital twin simulation model to verify a vessel’s power and propulsion system modules and their integration in a virtual test setup.