MAROFF-2-Maritim virksomhet og offsh-2

The purpose of the VISTA project is to develop an innovative, integrated software package for design of the ships of the future. The project will give Vard's ship designers the possibility to simulate, analyze and compare the performance of complete ship systems, both for a specific operation and in a lifecycle perspective. Simulation has become a very important tool within most parts of the maritime field, as well as for other parts within engineering science. Wether we are handeling hydrodynamics, powerplants or control systems - to mention some of the many domains involved in ship design - simulation is today used for both design, testing, research and development. Unfortunately, simulation is today only available for the specialists within each domain, and only these specialists can make use of the simulation tools that exists.In addition, many different software tools are used within the different domains and companies, and there is no standardized way of coupling these tools together. The above makes it difficult for the generalist - the ship designer - to use simulation as a tool directly in his/her work. It also complicates collaboration between domains, resulting in todays ship systems being design and optimized seperately. Since the different ship systems compete for the same energy and space on board a ship, there is always a risk that some systems is optimized at the expence of others. VISTA has a goal of changing this. The project develops a simulation based software specially developed for ship designers which enables them to configure a virtual ship/digital twin and analyze it's capabilities by numerical simulation of different scenarioes which represents expected use patterns - without expert knowledge within each of the special domains of ship design. The software developed in VISTA has been named "VISTA Workbench". It will offer an intuitive, graphical user interface where the ship designer can choose a variety of ship components - hull, power plant, propulsion units, deck machinery, control systems etc. - from a database and configure them according to the requirements of the vessel design. The configured ship model can then be tested in different simulated scenarioes. The scenarioes can describe specific operations with duration of some hours, and have as purpose to document the ships ability to execute the operation in question, or they can be based on operation of the ship over several years, with the purpose of estimating expected energy consumption and other life cycle costs. Based on the simulation results, VISTA Workbench will perform analysis of performance, energy consumption, operability, safety aspects etc. VISTA Workbench is based on the open standards, methods and software for coupling of models and simulation tools developed in the parallell research project "Virtual Prototyring of Maritime Systems & Operations" (ViProMa, NFR projectnr. 225322). Because of this, VISTA Workbench will not just be a design tool, but also a collaborative platform which will tie different domains and and actors in the maritime business - from research and development to ship designers and equipment suppliers - closer together. Project status pr. 1st of Junie 2017: After six months with low activity, development is startted up again, and the Workbench is closed to finished. During the summer, a test phase will be started where the software will be tested by Vard's ship designers in real vessel design settings, where the value of such tools will be fully demonstrated. During the last six months of 2017 the Workbench is completed and the test period is completed where a selection of ship designers in Vard Design has used the software developed for multidomain analysis to benchmark ship concepts against each other and document performance for each concept. Both time-domain (hours) and discrete-event (years) simulations are set up and tested with success from VISTA Workbench. The software developed in the project is therefore ready for implementation in Vard's ship design processes, and areas for further development and increased functionality is already identified. This is further work Vard will continue with.

The project´s vision is to create an innovative, integrated design and verification workbench to create synergies across multiple disciplines and empower designers with the ability to accurately and rapidly benchmark performance of the complete ship syste m over its operational lifecycle. The workbench will be based on the detailed simulation of ship logistics and marine operations in the context of a demanding physical environment, and enable the designer to perform a virtual sea trial that captures the s pecific customer-defined missions for the vessel over extended periods of time. This virtual sea trial will support the verification and documentation of vessel performance by simulating the complex interaction of hydro¬dynamics, power production and se rvice equipment in a realistic operating context. This is of particular importance for assessing the benefits and challenges of alternative hull forms, new power production systems and alternative service equipment arrangement. Examples include bow forms for improved handling of added resistance, dual-fuel and LNG engines, fuel-cells and batteries, and re-generative winches. Improved ability to rapidly analyse and verify new design solutions represents a significant contribution to the competitive positio n of the involved industrial partners in terms of developing innovative ships that are more energy efficient and have a have increased operability (share of time the vessel can perform its intended operations/tasks) and higher levels of safety (margins ne eded for operations/tasks to be performed without representing hazard to life, property or environment). This is of particular importance when designing ships for Arctic operations, where the combination of limited real operations experience and a physica lly demanding environment will require extensive upfront virtual testing and verification of the complete ship system.