BV Solutions M&O and TSI have signed a collaboration agreement to promote worldwide engineering services and solutions specialized in vibration and noise that can be applied during the design and operational phases of the ship to its delivery.
The partnership between BV Solutions M&O and TSI was formalized on July 2020, more than a year ago, to increase our business opportunities and offer wider solutions. The first collaboration between both companies is dated 12 years ago, in the framework of the European R&D projects SILENV and BESST, where both institutions were involved on the characterization of acoustic signatures of cruise ships and commercial vessels.
Both companies are compromised and aligned with the European Green Deal. In this aspect, BV Solutions M&O and TSI joined their capabilities and efforts for the design of ships with low environmental impact which aims to reduce and mitigate the underwater radiated noise generated by the shipping activity as well as the airborne noise radiated to the ports. With respect to this, the “acoustic signature” was included to the already known studies of noise and vibration on board of the ship.
Apart from that, the two institutions are able of characterizing the acoustic behavior of ships in transit through the quantification and analysis of underwater radiated noise generated during the operation stages. For this purpose, among other solutions, a Non-intrusive Cavitation Detection System (NiCDS) has been developed for autonomous detection of propeller cavitation based on the measurement of vibrations transmitted to the hull. This advance system is easy to install, flexible and adaptable to vessels with one or two propellers. The installation of the NiCDS brings multiple advantages as the improvement of ship’s acoustic signature due to the control of cavitation inception and the identification of undesired operating conditions. Other interesting advantages derived from the application of the Non-Intrusive Cavitation Detection System are also listed below:
- Extension of the service life from the elements affected by the cavitation phenomena such as the propeller and rudder.
- Control of the cavitation intensity with precision. This information is of critical importance to allow the navigation of ships in restricted noise areas, which will be established in the coming years in marine areas of high biological value.
- Suppression of vibrations derived from the inception of cavitation, improving the comfort levels on board of the ship.
- Optimization of fuel consumption thanks to the improvement of the ship performance.
The advantages that this bilateral collaboration agreement between BV Solutions M&O and TSI are not limited to the design of silent ships, but also to on board monitoring and maintenance 4.0 in the maritime transport. Thanks to BV’s extensive experience in Qualitative Risk Assessments (QRAs) and TSI’s extensive experience in Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM), a unique solution is offered for the control of the ship health with maximum guarantees. On top of that, the engineering teams from BV Solutions M&O and TSI are responsible for the development of predictive maintenance tools based on data analysis and machine learning, as well as data acquisition to feed Digital Twin Models (DTMs), addressing the challenge of digitization and the new industrial revolution commonly known as Industry 4.0.
The mission of QRA is to provide valuable information on the vessel’s risk profile identifying and classifying the most critical areas and risk situations for the vessel crew. It also provides a solid background in decision making for design and operations of vessels that may be necessary to demonstrate the assets are suitable for such purpose.
The integration of CBM and Maintenance 4.0 in ships and fleets of ships refers to a set of new technologies focused on the acquisition and processing of data that can be potentially applied for the monitoring of this ship’s assets and the detection of incipient failures. As compared to the current corrective maintenance operations, the incorporation of these revolutionary technologies within the maritime transport sector offers the following improvements:
- Rapid detection of failures and capacity to analyze large amounts of data.
- Reduction of downtimes.
- Reduction of time and maintenance costs.
- Increment of the ship service life due to a greater efficiency in decision making.
The DTMs has opened the path to the digital replication of the behaviour of industrial assets. Undoubtedly, the collaboration agreement between BV Solutions M&O and TSI adds the capabilities, strengths and experience of both companies, which will offer to their customers engineering solutions of high added value with the maximum guarantees.
