Increasingly advanced and integrated vessel systems offer potentially great benefits to shipowners and operators, but making sure all systems work reliably together can present significant challenges. Since 2018, a consortium of maritime industry stakeholders has joined forces to establish an ecosystem for collaborative digital twin simulations that will enable virtual exploration of solutions for designing, commissioning, operating and assuring complex, integrated systems.
To reach these ambitious goals, a Joint Industry Project (JIP) has been founded under the name Open Simulation Platform (OSP). Project co-founders DNV GL, Kongsberg Maritime, NTNU, and SINTEF Ocean have been joined by 20 industry partners in what promises to be a game-changing effort to maximise the benefits of digital twin technology. OSP is a step toward bringing the maritime industry up to the level of other industries such as automotive and aviation, with their long history of integrating complex systems.
The goal for OSP is to establish a standard for models and simulations in the maritime industry, enabling both re-use of models and collaborative system simulations to solve challenges in the design, building and operation of today’s and tomorrow’s ships. The JIP is scheduled to make its final work package deliveries by spring of 2020, laying the groundwork for the long-term ecosystem vision.
Innovation enabler
Software and systems integration issues can create challenges throughout the newbuilding and operational phases, leading to expensive delays, slowing innovation, and causing undesired incidents and downtime. According to Pierre Sames, DNV GL Group Technology and Research Director, there is a growing need to understand how different systems work together to help owners avoid costly consequences of unforeseen complications.
“As owners seek to equip vessels with more sophisticated digital solutions offered by different suppliers, they become more vulnerable to software and systems integration failures,” he says.
While he acknowledges that some suppliers already offer proprietary ‘digital twin’ services, the high cost of creating simulation models, limited re-use and interoperability of these models and lack of common simulation infrastructure has made true industry collaboration difficult.
“The Open Simulation Platform will create the foundation for an open ecosystem where the maritime industry can share simulation models to facilitate the creation of holistic digital twin systems and vessels,” he says. “We believe the OSP will strengthen collaboration between owners, shipyards, equipment manufacturers and sub-suppliers to help manage growing challenges related to the design, integration, commissioning and operation of increasingly complex, integrated systems and software.”
A new way of building digital twins
Smogeli explains that an OSP digital twin is comprised of a large set of interconnected models and digital twin components. The beauty of the OSP concept lies in the interoperability of models from all stakeholders and modeling tools, and the collaboration opportunities this offers.
“With the OSP approach the digital twin is built in steps, starting with simpler models in the design phase, then substituting these with more accurate models and actual control system software in the construction phase, and finally being able to fine-tune and adapt models based on data streams in the operational phase,” he says.
“OEMs, system and component providers and other stakeholders can make their models and digital twin components visible in the catalogue, and offer them to other participants in the ecosystem at their own commercial and IPR terms. A digital twin component would include engineering models of the equipment physics and control system software, as well as emulated control system hardware, human-machine interfaces and control panels, making it possible to perform virtual commissioning, configuration and testing in a collaborative effort on the platform.”
Assessing emergent properties – the next level digital twin
The OSP approach is more than data-driven digital twin, which does not contain any real physics, explains Smogeli.
“Comparing data from the real asset with the digital twin in order to refine the twin is important, but it pertains mainly to monitoring equipment, such as in predictive or condition-based maintenance. But a data driven digital twin cannot monitor or detect system failures in complex systems that arise due to software errors and system integration failures, or predict the effect of changes to software or other system elements. Enabling a twin to assess emergent properties represents the next level digital twin.”
Emergent properties exist in a system only because of the interaction of its parts. Studying the parts or components in isolation does not reveal which emergent properties might arise.
“Emergent properties are a risk throughout a vessel’s operation, not just in the design phase,” Smogeli explains. “For example, an engineer might do a software update for a thruster, which might be fine in isolation, but if it’s not tested in an OSP-like twin environment, it could have a mission-critical impact through other systems on the vessel.”
Such system issues are difficult to deal with, he points out, involving painstaking troubleshooting to find the critical emergent problems, and typically leading to expensive downtime for ships and rigs.
The aim of the OSP is to resolve these issues by incorporating engineering models and the actual control system software from all manufacturers into the digital twin.
“Then it becomes possible to assess also the emergent system properties through systematic simulations. The next-level digital twin then becomes the most reliable as-built documentation of the vessel systems. This is useful throughout the vessel lifecycle."
