{mprestriction ids="1,2"}In July last year, Rolls-Royce Marine, The Norwegian University of Technology Science (NTNU), research organisation SINTEF Ocean and classification society DNV GL signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the aim of creating an open source digital platform for use in the development of new ships.

That has now been formalised as the Open Simulation Platform (OSP) initiative, which has also welcomed additional Joint Industry Partners including Hyundai Heavy Industries, Kongsberg Digital, Vard and Offshore Simulator Centre.

A ‘digital twin’ is a digital copy of a real ship, including its systems, which incorporates all of the information available about the ship within a digital world, to optimise the ship’s design, maintenance, production and sustainability throughout its entire lifecycle.

“OSP is a joint industry project where the goal is to establish a maritime industry standard for models and system simulation, a standard that will allow companies to reuse simulation models and construct digital twins of existing and future vessels in a safe and more cost-efficient way,” said Jon Rysst, SVP and regional manager at DNV GL Maritime North Europe 

The project partners have committed to the creation of a collaboration platform that is open for use by other parties, with core aspects built on an open source framework. The platform is also being designed to support model libraries for storing simulated ship concepts, systems and equipment.

“Through working together in a virtual environment, we can achieve a larger degree of interaction between different systems and their owners,” said Professor Hans Petter Hildre at NTNU.

“We can also avoid individual businesses and developers spending a lot of time on their own testing systems in isolation, without having the opportunity to test how it actually will interact in operation with other systems.”

The OSP project will build on work in this area already done by the founding partners, with a prototype now running with a simulated vessel and a DP system conducting dynamic positioning operations.{/mprestriction}