Safe and Green Dynamic Positioning Operations of Offshore Vessels in an Arctic Environment

It is an expressed need of the industry to strengthen the competences of the Norwegian maritime industry in arctic marine operations with special focus on dynamic positioning (DP). The objective of this KMB is to enable future systems for DP in arctic environments to be automatic control systems. The control system must construct an accurate picture of the vessel’s and the environment’s situation, combining measurements with models in observers, and it must act on this information safely using automatic feedback control. However, in designing such control systems, it is vital to have a good understanding of the vessel and its hydrodynamics and the disturbances that influence the dynamic behavior of the vessel (ice; in addition to waves, wind, current).

There are two main research objectives of the research; (1) to understand and build competence on the effects of ice loads on DP vessels through modeling and simulation, and (2) to carry out mathematical control designs that targets import ant aspects for safe commercial systems. This means that focus is put on the DP vessel itself: ice-hull interaction forces and how to control the vessel for DP in ice, and on the ice management system: how to collect, analyze, and present ice data for the operation area and how to perform physical ice management most efficient.

The project is a collaboration between the Department of Marine Technology, the Department of Engineering Cybernetics and the Department of Civil and Transport Engineering at NTNU, the Norwegian Research Council, Kongsberg Maritime, Statoil and DNV, and includes 5 PhD positions and 1 PostDoc position.

For more info, see the project website.