Topic Review
Digital Twin in the Maritime Domain
In the present world, simulation has become an integral part of system development for every engineering discipline. Starting from solving design problems using numerical algorithms in the 1960s, simulation has taken us to the digital era where simulation is integrated into the life cycle of the particular product including design, testing, manufacturing, commissioning, operating, and decommissioning. This process of evolution has opened the pathway to DT which is more versatile and dynamic than the physical twin concept. Ever since, the concept of Digital Twin (DT) has become a reality expanding its outreach to various disciplines around the world including the maritime domain. The novel concept of the DT was first proposed in the year 2002 by Dr Michael Grieves, a leading scientist in the field of advanced manufacturing at the Florida Institute of Technology at a manufacturing engineers conference in Troy, Michigan. His idea was based on constructing digital information on the physical model on his own. This digital information is a replica of the data embedded in the physical system which will be connected with the physical system in the complete life cycle of a particular system/component.
  • 537
  • 24 May 2023
Topic Review
New Energy Ship Digital Twin Technology
The shipping industry will undergo a transformation to low-carbon, intelligent and integrated operation and maintenance (O&M). Ship Digital Twin (DT) technology twins the shipping entity in the real world and the virtual twin in the digital world. A virtual ship twin can reproduce various operational conditions and complicated event processes. Ship DT is a new technology that offers three distinct advantages for new energy ships: It uses multi-dimensional multi-source data to create the navigational environment twin for new energy ships. The navigational environment twin accurately simulates the condition for the shipboard’s new energy. DT also combines the ship and the meteorological environment together in a virtual space to predict the power output for a new energy ship; DT allows intelligent O&M for new energy ships and provides smart real-time strategies for ship power scheduling, fault detection, and predictive maintenance. DT determines the whole life cycle performance for new energy ships to increase their long-term and overall economy. DT technology significantly increases the efficiency of ship power studies and reduces the experimental risk. DT for a new energy ship power system allows the transient simulation of a power system.
  • 229
  • 15 May 2023
Topic Review
Marine Battery Energy Storage Systems on Ships
The shipping industry is going through a period of technology transition that aims to increase the use of carbon-neutral fuels. There is a significant trend of vessels being ordered with alternative fuel propulsion. Shipping’s future fuel market will be more diverse, reliant on multiple energy sources. One of very promising means to meet the decarbonisation requirements is to operate ships with sustainable electrical energy by integrating local renewables, shore connection systems and battery energy storage systems (BESS). 
  • 1.3K
  • 20 Mar 2023
Topic Review
Rehabilitation of Tubular Joints
Exposure to load and offshore environment degrades the load-bearing capacity of tubular joints, necessitating reinforcement of these joints. Reinforcement is sometimes required for lifespan enhancement or qualification based on new requirements. Available reinforcement techniques include welded rings inside/outside the chord, doubler/collar plate at the brace-chord interface, grout filling, and clamp installation on the joints with/without cement. While these techniques increase the load-bearing capacity of damaged tubular joints, various practical limitations exist.
  • 433
  • 10 Mar 2023
Topic Review
Monitoring Systems in Shipping and Offshore Industry
Maritime transport is the main mode of international trade (up to 80% of goods); thus, marine structures are critical because of its specific influence to trade. Ships and offshore structures are used worldwide for a variety of functions and in a variety of water depths and environments. Monitoring the health of marine structures plays a key role in reducing the risk of structural failure. The incorporation of a health-monitoring system makes it possible to optimize the design, operation and/or maintenance, moving from criteria based on experience or conservative estimates, to others that take advantage of source of information about real-time in-service behavior. Structural monitoring also makes it possible to reveal the start of damage in structures that would otherwise remain invisible until a catastrophic/unexpected manifestation of damage occurs, allowing for decisions such as decommissioning for unscheduled maintenance actions or continuing until the next scheduled maintenance.
  • 398
  • 24 Feb 2023
Topic Review
Semantic Modeling, Simulation and Cybersecurity in the IoUT
As maritime and military missions become more and more complex and multi-factorial over the years, there has been a high interest in the research and development of (autonomous) unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). Latest efforts concern the modeling and simulation of UUVs’ collaboration in swarm formations, towards obtaining deeper insights related to the critical issues of cybersecurity and interoperability. The research topics, which are constantly emerging in this domain, are closely related to the communication, interoperability, and secure operation of UUVs, as well as to the volume, velocity, variety, and veracity of data transmitted in low bit-rate due to the medium, i.e., the water. 
  • 487
  • 09 Jan 2023
Topic Review
Hybrid Ship Propulsion Systems
Following the trends in the automobile industry, hybrid electric propulsion systems have been proposed and used in ships to achieve higher efficiency, mitigate carbon emissions and reduce overall operational costs by combining traditional mechanical propulsion with electrical propulsion. Studies have been conducted on the diverse types of hybrid marine power systems to understand the behaviour of the ships at different operating and loading conditions to optimise the cost function of the hybrid system model. 
  • 1.6K
  • 06 Jan 2023
Topic Review
Gearbox Technologies for Tidal Energy Harvesting
Gearboxes are widely used in automobile, aerospace, energy, and process industries and are considered indispensable. Tidal flows always have very low speeds that rarely exceed 5 m/s. Lower tidal speeds result in lower turbine rotation speeds. Therefore, if conventional generators are used to produce electricity, gearboxes are necessary to achieve higher rotor speeds. 
  • 1.2K
  • 26 Dec 2022
Topic Review
SAR Image Target Detection with Convolutional Neural Networks
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) target detection is a significant research direction in radar information processing. Aiming at the poor robustness and low detection accuracy of traditional detection algorithms, SAR image target detection based on the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is presented in this entry.
  • 612
  • 16 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Online Pipeline Characterisation on Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
Nowadays, more frequently, it is necessary to perform underwater operations such as surveying an area or inspecting and intervening on industrial infrastructures such as offshore oil and gas rigs or pipeline networks. The use of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) has grown as a way to automate these tasks, reducing risks and execution time. One of the used sensing modalities is vision, providing RGB high-quality information in the mid to low range, making it appropriate for manipulation or detail inspection tasks. This research presents the use of a deep neural network to perform pixel-wise 3D segmentation of pipes and valves on underwater point clouds generated using a stereo pair of cameras. In addition, two novel algorithms are built to extract information from the detected instances, providing pipe vectors, gripping points, the position of structural elements such as elbows or connections, and valve type and orientation. The neural network and information algorithms are implemented on an AUV and executed in real-time, validating that the output information stream frame rate of 0.72 fps is high enough to perform manipulation tasks and to ensure full seabed coverage during inspection tasks. The used dataset, along with a trained model and the information algorithms, are provided to the scientific community.
  • 448
  • 11 Nov 2022
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