E!115620/COD15: Active Airkeel stabiliser control for increased comfort and safety, fuel efficiency and operation flexibility of workboats

The AMCOSTAR consortia has developed an active Airkeel system that is enhancing active control through advanced feedback learning to permit challenging operations such as: precision heel and roll motion control, high loads, increased crane capacity, operation in hard weather and totally more efficient usage of these vessels. The project is mainly aimed at the following three vessel types: - CTV (offshore wind) Focus: Crew comfort and safety, augmented load capacity, extended weather window, fuel savings. - Workboat (e.g. in-shore aquaculture, offshore construction sites) Focus: Increased cargo and crane capacity, extended operations, fleet cost optimization. - Crew boat (e.g. aquaculture, offshore construction sites) Focus: Crew comfort and safety, Extended weather window, cost and usage optimized fleet usage.

The Project outcome has been to develop and demonstrate an integrated Airkeel and adaptive control system (ACS) enabling enhanced stability and capacity for smaller boats (6-40m). The Airkeel adds buoyancy used as inverted pendulum, which leads to lighter, more stable boats with higher load & crane capacity to size ratio. Applying advanced learning/AI with new data derived, will permit comfortable and safe operations in harsh weather, which is essential for its commercialization. The Project will enable the Consortium to apply the ACS to act as a roll countermeasure where waves or currents challenge the boat stability. This means better stability of their boats, which will enable e.g. mounting larger cranes of 100%, increased capacity to 15 m work boats (WBs) like Klara II, increased load of +33% and fuel savings of 10%. Finally, the ACS will empower the Airkeel to reduce propulsion energy consumption by 10% (fossil or renewable), which is foreseen to improve energy efficiency, promising a dual climate mitigation contribution. For fossil fuels, this means reducing greenhouse gas emissions of 10% (GHGs); for electric boats, this means increased geographical and application range, accelerating the transition towards boat electrification.

BACKGROUND For aquaculture, e.g. salmon farms which dominate in-shore aquaculture in the Baltic and the North Sea, hybrid and electric boats are being introduced (Annex F5a; H1e-i). Boat designers would select larger boats with higher fuel consumption for offering their customers a stable platform for mounting high capacity cranes as independent modules The AMCOSTAR consortium aims at developing an active Airkeel system by enhancing active control through advanced feedback learning to permit challenging operations such as: precision heel and roll motion control, high loads, increased crane capacity, operation in hard weather, for the following three vessel types: - CTV (offshore wind) Focus: Crew comfort and safety, augmented load capacity, extended weather window, fuel savings. - Workboat (e.g. in-shore aquaculture, offshore construction sites) Focus: Increased cargo and crane capacity, extended operations, fleet cost optimization. - Crew boat (e.g. aquaculture, offshore construction sites) Focus: Crew comfort and safety, Extended weather window, cost and usage optimized fleet usage. This approach brings together our consortium’s know-how and IP (Q32). Namely: - DACOMA, who has developed, patented and prototype tested a novel vessel stabilizer system for the offshore marine industries, based on their proprietary, ground-breaking Airkeel technology - TUCO, specialized in designing and manufacturing workboats; experienced in system installation and full-scale testing - A+D, specialised in in- and off-shore markets data with a focus on energy (wind) and aquaculture (salmon) segments - SDU, extensive knowledge about control system theory, modelling and operation simulations