Internship or Graduation: Solver development for towing equilibria calculation

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About us

Damen aims to become the world's most sustainable and digitally connected shipyard. The Research, Development & Innovation department develops and implements the technology and know-how to achieve these ambitions. We actively assist the business in creating an innovative product portfolio and provide forward-thinking guidance to improve the quality and performance of Damen's products and services.

This assignment will be carried out in the Damen head office in Gorinchem. The daily supervision will be both from the RD&I Development Team and the RD&I Simulation Development Team. RD&I supports various departments within Damen with questions regarding tugboats. Topics range from sound and vibrations to performance related analyses like the towing capabilities of tugs.

The role

Advanced tug designs with excellent towing capabilities have been a trademark of the success of Damen since the start. Around 1995 the development of more advanced tugboats that are able to tow at higher speeds came in an acceleration. Decarbonisation and digitalisation ambitions are drivers for the development of ever more complex configurations of the layout of a tugboat in terms of propulsion and hull shapes.

TugSim is a software developed by Damen since 1992. It calculates the maximum towing forces that a tugboat can exert on another vessel at speed. Developing innovative tugboat designs involves looking into unconventional thruster and hull configurations. For this purpose, TugSim has to be improved such that it can solve equilibria for various configurations.

TugSim is determining the maximum performance by quantifying the towline forces for a large range of possible equilibria using a quasi-static approach. Currently, Tugsim is able to find those equilibria for a particular set of propulsion configurations, i.e., 2 thrusters at the aft. We would like to extend the capacity of TugSim to be able to handle unconventional configurations with any number of thrusters in any configuration. Examples are Rotor Tug, Eddy Tug, RAVE Tug, a tug with 4 thrusters or an asymmetrical configuration. Physically the problem is solvable, however developing the correct mathematical approach to finding the equilibria is a challenge. The assignment would be to improving the solver of TugSim such that results can be achieved in a consistent and repeatable manner, providing insight in how realistic and stable all defined equilibria are. Beside the theoretical approach using mathematics, this would also involve in looking at different navigation methods by talking to tugboat captains. The assignment is an interesting mix of translating practice into an updated solver by programming your findings into the TugSim program.

Key accountabilities

As a student you will:

• Deliver a detailed in-depth analysis of your research problem;
• Plan and organize your work in order to answer the research question;
• Be navigating in a multidisciplinary field, ranging from tugboat designers, tugboat captains and domain experts within RD&I and at the university;
• Be expected to present your final results to the university, RD&I department and other interested colleagues.

Skills & experience

This assignment is intended for a University Master student Naval Architecture / Maritime Technology / Mathematics / Applied Physics with:

• Mathematically very strong oriented mindset
• Good programming/scripting skills in Matlab
• Good command of the English language (spoken and written)

What we offer

• An internship/ graduation fee and travel allowance will be paid for the duration of the assignment.
• A pleasant and dynamic, international work environment with informal atmosphere
• Mentoring at academic level will be available throughout the internship.