Force Technology's maritime simulator to offer new depths of analysis in shallow waterways

摘要

Force Technology has been complementing its towing tank and wind tunnel facilities with mathematical modelling services for 40 years. By the 1990s the synergy of these capabilities - taking measurements of both external forces and internal forces - made it possible to offer simulation services for training and analysis purposes. However, performing calculations on hullform in a real-time simulation has long been hampered by the computational power required to perform this accurately. But advances in computing over the past decade, notably the opportunity to exploit the processing power of graphics cards originally developed for gaming, means that it's now possible to calculate forces on a ship based on a grid model of the vessel and perform massive parallel computations. Now, as part of a new two-year innovation project funded by the Danish Ministry of Education and Research, Force Technology is set to bring these gains into its simulation platforms with the announcement of a ship hydrodynamics model. The model will make it possible to obtain far more accurate simulations of the wave and flow conditions around the ship in shallow waters, ports and channels to obtain the correct ship response.