HANSA 01-2021

SCHiFFStECHNiK | SHiP tECHNoloGY
© Marioth
The popular HullPIC conference was held in the suitably spaced Catholic academy in Hamburg
Mission completed, moving forward
all models are wrong, but some are still useful. The HullPiC 2020 – the Hull & Propeller
Performance insights Conference gave fresh cooking recipes, for better performance
management and revenues. By Richard Marioth
Should one have a conference in 2020?
– No, definitely not! Not in Europe,
not in spring, summer, autumn or winter
and in particular not with a strong international
character. What about Covid-19?!
Should we then put progress on energy
effciency and hull management in particular
on hold? – No, definitely not! The
challenges of climate change and iMo
goals have not gone away!
it is a dilemma, but one where solutions
can be found. in 2020, the organization
of a conference requires »special agents«.
For the HullPiC, Volker Bertram played
that roll. after two aborted attempts of
execution, the popular HullPiC conference
was finally held on 26-28 october,
in its 5 th edition, at the suitably spaced
Catholic academy in Hamburg. Mission
completed just in time, as Germany went
into lockdown shortly after.
The venue
attendance in person was lower than
usual, with most participants following
just digitally, watching the video presentations
from around the globe. Those
who attended enjoyed a stunning view
from the roof terrace over Hamburg. »i
was positively surprised that so many
came under the current circumstances«,
said Martin trane ibsen (Jotun) who
partnered in the organization. and discussion
among the various stakeholders
was as active as in previous years, both after
presented papers and during the moderated
forums.
The Catholic academy, with its 1970s
look, is described on its website as a place
where people can openly discuss future
questions of the society. This mission
was accomplished during HullPiC 2020.
Questions like: Which performance analysis
method can you trust? are noon reports
enough or can only high-frequency
data solve the problems? Should we rely
on machine learning or digital twins
(based on CFd simulations) instead?
HullPiC put the limelight on these questions,
possibly »yet again«, as some of the
topics seem to be timeless.
Hull & propeller performance analysis
is a colorful and powerful world. Colorful
as one sees a lot of diagrams and fancy
CFd pictures to make the human eyes realize
what data means. Powerful, because
the financial impact of hull & propeller
performance on ship operation and the
greenhouse gas emissions is huge. The
recipe to master hull & propeller performance
management has several ingredients.
The cosmos of performance management
starts with data and data remains
at its core. Historically, »data« meant
noon reports in shipping. one observation
per day is better than nothing, but it
is woefully little to develop speed - consumption
relations, in particular without
proper validation processes. Najmeh
Montazeri (VP Solutions) showed that
confidence intervals and the data reliability
can be improved significantly by
using autologged and weather hindcast
data. Still: »taking care by continuous
sensor validation and data maintenance
is required in order to obtain reliable data
for performance analysis«, was pointed
out by Klas reimer (Hoppe Marine).
The classic division between rather expensive
high-frequency automatic data
logging and cheap, inaccurate noon reporting
may be overcome by hybrid approaches,
where both camps and technologies
come together. Such methods use
noon reports and external data from multiple
sources (e.g. aiS, ECdiS), employing
machine learning to fast digital twins
HaNSa – international Maritime Journal 01 | 2021
43