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Situation

: RoRo ferry by FSG

Shipyards in Europe cannot compete on price alone against overseas competitors, especially those based in the Far East. Therefore, European shipbuilders need to concentrate on high-quality construction projects that are specially tailored to the requirements of their customers. Consequently each ship is a unique product, produced only once or in a very small type series. To improve their competitive position, it is essential for modern shipyards to be able to harness the most advanced simulation and design tools to produce complex structures cost effectively. The objective is to recognise and reduce the technical and economical risks that are implicit in large and complex ship building projects. The vision is the complete virtual design of a ship.

Challenges

The FSG shipyard continuously improves the design of new generations of ships by introducing innovative concepts and technologies. The trend is to replace traditional steel structures by so called “sandwich structures” to obtain better acoustic, heat transfer and vibration behaviour at less weight. To gain approval from the classification societies, comprehensive material research and tests are necessary. These tests are accompanied by the development of material models that are executed by specialised computer programmes.

Since the shipyard does not yet have practical experience with the sandwich
technology, collaboration with the CMT has been established in order to design and optimise sandwich structures for selected ship components. In the case of this experiment the component is the funnel. The SESIS (Ship Design and Simulation System), being developed by Fraunhofer SCAI and DLR, supports this collaboration by sharing data in a transparent and secure way.

Central challenges of a new funnel built with sandwich structures are the material stiffness and fire security. While structure optimisation is done by conventional FEM programmes available at the shipyard, the computational power required for the simulation of heat transfer is neither available at the shipyard nor the supplier.

Solutions

The solution is to connect the engineer’s workplace with the computing resources of an independent ASP (Application Service Provider) offering hardware and software services via the Internet.

The outcome of this Business Experiment is a Grid interface being integrated into the SESIS environment. A Graphical User Interface enables the engineer to configure FDS (Fire Dynamics Simulator) jobs before submitting them to a remote server, owned and operated by T-Systems. The Grid protocols are based on the Globus and UNICORE middleware.

A Service Level Agreement regulates the allocation of hardware and software resources to guarantee reliable Quality of Service and also determines the prices for these services. After job execution, the simulation results are transmitted back to the engineer’s desktop for analysis
and evaluation.

Business Impact

The shipbuilding partners are interested in Grid solutions because they have to develop a new ship design in a very short time frame. The design of a big ship is a very complex task and the time allocated to the design phase can be as short as one to two months. Using the benefits of high performance computing resources on demand, the shipyards expect to shorten the design phase further while at the same time reducing uncertainty factors. As a result of the faster and more efficient design process, better ships can be built, cost can be reduced, expenses can be calculated more accurately and the chances of winning a contract in a very competitive industry are improved.

Modern shipbuilding is distributed over several industry sectors. Only one third of the value added is realised by the shipyards themselves. Most of the added value accrues to component suppliers. The results of this Business Experiment apply to all industry sectors involved in shipbuilding.

: Steel cutting and construction of a funnel

Perspectives

This experiment will enable the IT service providers to enter a new market segment where on-demand computing is nearly unknown. The showcases demonstrate the potential of Grid technologies for relevant industrial applications in the maritime sector. It is expected that the results of the experiment will be of interest not only to shipyards, but also to their consultants and supplier industries.

Publications

Champions League der ICT
Best Practice, T-Systems Customer Magazine, Vol. 4 (2008)

BE16 Ship Building - Case Study

BE16 Ship Building - Fact Sheet

Partners

	Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft	Flensburg, Germany
	Center of Maritime Technologies	Hamburg, Germany
	Fraunhofer-Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI)	Sankt Augustin, Germany
	Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR)	Köln, Germany
	T-Systems, Solutions for Research	Stuttgart, Germany