Ship Lifecycle Software Solutions (Horizon 2020 Grant Agreement 690770)

In order to produce ship designs that satisfy customer needs, production and legislative requirements, a large number of software tools are used in each stage of the design process to evaluate a variety of characteristics and life phases (structural, operational performance, production scheduling, etc.). Nowadays, there are various tools in the market that are specialised in ship design, but these are currently used in the detailed designs, not for early stage designs where they could be particularly useful.

To compete with the larger yards and low-cost countries, Europe’s SME designers and production yards need new tools and paradigms to:

• Carry out concept-stage design 3DCAD modelling with a reduced but sufficient number of main  definition parameters, and use these to establish a data set suitable to determine work load, processes, resource needs build a more complete analysis model.
• Integrate the different design stages through more standardised information, using an approach such as the one which successfully worked for Building Information Modelling (BIM) in construction, to be able to keep the bid- stage technical information and pass it through into the detailed design stages.
• Introduce a reliable modelling method for lifecycle analyses (costs, environmental, risk) for designs at the early design stage (supporting bid decisions) and later stages for detailed design.
• To deal with the ripple-through of lifecycle effects if design changes are made before final design or to assess the through life impact of changes at various stages in order to arrive at optimum configurations
• To have a reliable database of the design and lifecycle aspects of equipment and materials to underpin accurate virtual modelling (thus avoiding GIGO – "garbage in = garbage out”)

SHIPLYS will improve the competitiveness of the European shipyards and SMEs involved in shipbuilding, ship repairing and recycling by:

Project RTD objectives:

• Analysing and integrating Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA), environmental and risk assessments, product and process lifecycle management (PLM) and Virtual Product tools developed from previous national and EU level projects into a comprehensive and customised and single package simulation and analyses tool to achieve the goals of the project.
• Performing three representative pilot demonstrations testing the technical, economical and commercial viability of innovative concepts for design and production processes in order to minimise life cycle costs and develop the appropriate technical guides to enable custom-made optimal solutions from a life-cycle perspective.
• Sharing knowledge among all stake holders, including shipyards, ship owners, R&D developers and academics, for best practices and assets’ performance for minimal total costs over the useful economic life.

SHIPLYS is funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (2014-2020) Call number H2020-MG-2015_TwoStages Topic MG-4.3-2015 - System modelling and life-cycle cost optimisation for waterborne assets under Grant Agreement No 690770.