EFFORTS - Effective Operations in Ports 30-10-2009 in IST - CENTEC (sp)
The project “Effective Operations in Ports” was created with the purpose of improving both, the competitiveness of European port operations and the quality of the of the ports labour conditions.
The FP-6 DG Research Integrated Project “Effective Operations in Ports (EFFORTS)” was created with the purpose of improving both, the competitiveness of European port operations and the quality of the ports labour conditions and market, being a prominent one in coastal regions. With 43 partners, the EFFORTS project focused on three scopes of application: Navigation in Ports, Ports and Environment, and Port Organisation and Infrastructure. IST/CENTEC developed the work in the scope of ship manoeuvring simulators, especially in the hydrodynamics aspects of the interaction of towing ships with towed ships and the simulator graphical aspects. Also, work was performed in the area of risk modelling of ports operations and developing of a software tool to evaluate and monitoring risks at Ports.
ABS Funded PhD Scholarship 19-07-2009 in IST - CENTEC
As part of its research cooperation with CENTEC, ABS is funding a 3-year PhD scholarship for work in the area of Ship Structural Reliability.
As part of its research cooperation with the Centre for Marine Technology and Engineering (CENTEC) of the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, ABS is funding a 3-year PhD scholarship for work in the area of Ship Structural Reliability. The scholarship program starts in September 2009. The successful candidate is expected to have an appropriate background and to attend the doctoral programme in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at IST, conducting research in the field of Ship Structural Reliability, leading to a PhD dissertation. The working language is English. The selection of the candidate will be based on his or her CV and aptitudes. The conditions of the fellowship are those set out in IST’s rules and regulations governing research fellowships and grants, which in turn are based on the regulations of the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology. Send your application with full CV and covering letter to Prof. C. Guedes Soares (centec@mar.ist.utl.pt).
EXTREME SEAS 01-07-2009 in IST - CENTEC (sp)
The project EXTREME SEAS “Design for Ship Safety in Extreme Seas”, funded by the European Programme Sustainable Surface Transport will start in September 2009.
The project, with the duration of 36 months, is lead by the Norwegian Classification Society “Det Norske Veritas”, in which the Centre for Marine Technology and Engineering participates and will act as the Technical Coordinator of the project. The project addresses in particular the assessment of the occurrence of extreme waves in advanced numerical and physical simulation models as well as the development of new advanced simulation and design methodology and tools for wave-structure interaction in extreme waves. A further objective is to develop warning criteria for marine structures against extreme sea states and extra-ordinarily large waves, and to implement them in a marine weather forecasting system operated by a meteorological office belonging to the Consortium. The developed warning criteria will be available for decision support systems for marine structures. The developed methodology and tools will be generally applicable to different ship types. The case studies considered in EXTREME SEAS will be devoted to large container vessels, to passenger ships, to LNG carriers and to product and chemical tankers. Critical responses will be investigated including green water impact on superstructures of the passenger ships. Weaknesses of the current design procedures for ship structures will be highlighted.
SAFEOFFLOAD project – Safeoffloading from floating LNG Platforms 26-06-2009 in IST - CENTEC (sp)
The SAFEOFFLOAD project, funded by the EU-STREP Programme (TST4-CT-2005-012560) ended in June 2009.
The ultimate goal of the project was to optimize the FLNG system to maximize operability and safety of offloading operations, maximize the weather windows during which FLNG barges can be offloaded and operated, maximize the safety and efficiency of the offloading operation, minimize the possibility of collision with failure of cryogenic lines. Work was done in order to study the capacity to predict the behavior of vessels during offloading. Also, a methodology was provided for a decision support system that monitors continuously the environment and combines this information with weather forecast and simulation of vessel motions. The coordinator was Shell International Exploration and Production. The other partners were DHI, DNV, Noble Denton, Imperial College, University of Oxford and IST/CENTEC, that was also Technical Coordinator of the project.
SAFEDOR Project 01-04-2009 in IST - CENTEC
The SAFEDOR project on “Design, Operation and Regulation for Safety”, is an integrated project funded by the 6th Framework programme of the European Union.
SAFEDOR is formed by 52 European organizations representing all the sectors of the maritime industry and coordinated by the Classification Society Germanischer Lloyd. The project that started in February 2005 finished in April 2009. CENTEC was involved in the tasks related with reliability of marine structures; Formal Safety Assessment of LNG vessels; in the development of innovative solutions for a small LNG tanker and the definition of potential risk control options through the application of Bayesian network models. The book Risk-Based Ship Design – methods, tools and applications, Apostolos Papanikolau (Ed.), Springer, 2009, 368 pages was published with the results of the project.
MARNIS Project 31-03-2009 in IST - CENTEC
The MARNIS project ended in March 2009. This project funded under the 6º Framework programme sustainable Surface Transports was coordinated by the Dutch organization AVV, Transport Research Centre.
In this project, the CENTEC team has applied a model of environmental impact of maritime oil spill, using an ecological criteria with a priority index of coastal resources. The Portuguese coast, the biodiversity, their exposition to the sea waves and the protected areas were identified and classified. The possibility of these results being used by the Portuguese Maritime Authorities as supporting information in the decision making actions and the use of contigency equipments in case of oil spill were discussed.
RISPECT Project: Risk-based Expert System for Through-Life Ship Structural Inspection and Maintenance and New-Build Ship Structural Design 31-01-2009 in IST - CENTEC (sp)
The primary objective of the project is to make available to navigation companies a tool that permits the control of all structural aspects of a ship.
Having started in October 2008, with funding from the EU FP7 Programme, the primary objective of the project is to make available to navigation companies a tool that permits the control of all structural aspects of a ship. The first challenge is the establishment of a methodology to perform ship inspections with the objective of storing the output data of the inspections related to the structural problems of the ships (factures, corrosion, cracks and deformation) that will be registered in a central statistical database. The new methodology will be available, combining a detailed analysis of a long-term experience related to a large number of ships with reliability methods to make available better inspection plans based on risks and project design orientations. The project involves11 European partners www.rispect.eu/
Ship Manouvers Project 15-01-2009 in IST - CENTEC
In January 2009 the project “Methodology for ship manoeuvring tests using self-propelled models” has started, being funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.
The plan in this project is to develop a control-and measurements system for conducting manoeuvring tests on any free-running model of a surface ship. The model will operate as an autonomous surface ship, but it can also be adapted to operate by remote control. For testing the system developed, two fibre-glass models with different hull forms, operational speed and control device arrangement will to be manufactured and equipped.
MARPORT Project 01-01-2009 in CENTEC
The MARPORT project “System to Forecast Wave Conditions in the Portuguese Ports” funded by the Portuguese Innovation Agency (ADI) through the IDEIA/ Prime programme has terminated in June 2008.
This project, led by the Douro e Leixões Port Authority, had the participation of CENTEC-IST and Sines Port Authority. The CENTEC team has developed an operational system to forecast the sea states for Leixões and Sines Ports, based on information generated by high resolution models on a local scale (MM5 and SWAN) with initial and boundary conditions provided, respectively, by global models (GFS and WAM). With this goal, a computer cluster was installed to be used on a daily basis to execute the MM5 and SWAM models and the global model WAM. The forecast system is working in an automatic mode providing forecast of spectral and wave model parameters (significant height and average directions) every 6 hours. The atmospheric model MM5 and the wave models (WAM and SWAM) were tested, and producing good results.