The European Commission has awarded 6.2 Million Euros to a new research project that aims to develop simulation and modelling tools to minimise the time and costs involved in ship design and production.
The project, SHIPLYS (Ship Lifecycle Software Solutions) aims to largely improve the competitiveness of European shipyards by supporting small and medium size (SME) naval architects, shipbuilders and ship-owners in the world market. The project will help by enabling them to reduce time and costs of design and production by developing better ship concepts through virtual prototyping, which helps to meet increasing demands for life cycle cost analyses (LCCA), environmental assessments, risk assessments and end-of-life considerations.
At the current time, calculation and modelling tools used to overcome these needs are difficult to use and time consuming, especially for SMEs. Therefore, by using a team of 12 leading maritime companies and research facilities, SHIPLYS will produce new techniques for fast, multidisciplinary modelling capability for the marine industry.
Virtual protyping, simulation modelling, and SHIPLYS life cycle suite of tools, SHIPLYS LCTs, which are compatible with existing software, such as FORAN and Ship Constructor, will be used to help develop a model that will enable the investigation into alternative methods easily.
The SHIPLYS consortium is led by TWI Ltd and comprises 12 partners in total including Ferguson Marine Engineering Ltd. (UK), Varna Maritime (Bulgaria), Astilleros de Santander SA (Spain), BMT Group Ltd. (UK) and its operating companies BMT SMART (UK), a vessel performance management systems provider, and BMT Nigel Gee Ltd (UK).
Two SMEs that will provide naval architecture and supply chain solutions include as2con-Alveus d.o.o. (Croatia), and Atlantec Enterprise Solutions Gmbh. (Germany).
Three Universities will also be part of the project, including the University of Strathclyde (UK), Instituto Superior Tecnico (Portugal), National Technical University of Athens (Greece), and two industrial R&D institutions including TWI Ltd. (UK), Fundacion Centro Tecnologico Soermar (Spain).
Lloyd’s Register EMEA (UK) will be the standards and validation body.
The project started in September 2016 and has a duration of 3 years.
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