VRS Research Objectives

The overall objective of the research is to implement, develop and realise an independent, generic, integrated platform for virtual modelling and simulation of critical marine technologies and to realise an application of this platform by targeting the design of an advanced ROPAX concept. Specific objectives include to:

• Model and integrate the components pertaining to the key critical technologies comprising a ship system, including those concerned with shipyards, ship owners, operators and port authorities
• Develop a simulation engine capable of bringing all the critical technologies together to evaluate the performance of the integrated ship system
• Design an inference engine to support the modelling and management of the dependencies between the integrated systems
• Develop software tools for virtual real time interaction with the ship platform
• Develop and test a virtual prototype innovative ship (ROPAX) within the integrated virtual platform and evaluate the performance with a physical (real) prototype
• Provide whole life-phase ship support
• Support the development of an efficient, safe and environmentally friendly ship system by integrating all the relevant critical technologies
• Maximise interoperability and vessel performance through targeting an innovative, ROPAX, ship design adopting an integrated approach to addressing key life-phases such as design, production and operations
• Provide an alternative and optimised (streamlined) design development process and an overall integrated vessel development platform incorporating the latest digital design visualisation and virtual prototyping techniques.
• Construct a physical platform as another tool for testing critical technologies. The objective is to provide a durable measurement ship platform, large enough to minimise scale effects and to make it possible to perform tests in well monitored natural areas (lakes, rivers, bays).

Thus, the integrated platform will provide product developers and user with a means to visualise simulations involving all the aspects of the product such as operation, production, design, transportation, etc,; to interact with the platform to fulfil particular tasks, such as design, and investigate different scenarios of working methods such as concurrent, co-ordinated or semi-automated engineering; to model and optimise development and operational processes; to test and evaluate the reliability and risk inherent in the virtual world; and to facilitate access and real time interaction to a common, integrated ship platform.