2022 MTS DP Conference Day 2 – Personal Take

Introduction:?A previous article covered the first day of the premier dynamic positioning (DP) conference and this one gives a personal overview of the information presented on the second day.?After being cancelled by Covid in the two previous years, it was good to get back to normal.

Day 2, Session 5 (1-4 were day 1) – Testing:

Data Driven Verification; Closing the Loop (s = shortened title) – Amir Zangeneh, Kongsberg Maritime

Kongsberg’s K-INS reduces the need for onboard surveyors.?This requires additional hardware and Web access, so cost and convenience are relative.?It is best suited for highly-integrated, automated vessels, but a camera can be carried around.?It tries to avoid fraud with improved programs and checks.?I’m concerned but it could work.?Where are the cunning, experienced, white-haired foxes that are going to police this chicken coop??As an engineer, I think detailed recordings could be used for additional engineering analysis and system validation.?Adding that would be a competitive advantage.

Are We Testing Too Much? (s) – Manual Kooijman, Bureau Veritas

Manual provided the background and legislative limits to class survey and compared it to DP surveys.?Unlike DP consultancies, class societies are officially ranked on their results.?They have different but complementary focuses on safe operation.?IACS is pushing back against remote surveys, along with some port and flag states.?Testing provides value but it isn’t risk or cost free.?We can work smarter together.

Has Covid Changed DP Assurance Forever? (s) – Alessio Lombardi, Global Maritime

As a result of Covid and new or local market players, remote surveys went up, bad findings fell, and DP incidents surged.?Travel restrictions increased cost and predictability.?This inspired remote and new testers of variable quality - too many reports with no findings.?Problems are then found by expert testers or by DP incidents.?GM offers remote, non-invasive surveys to help resolve these problems.

Day 2, Session 6 – Thrusters:

Propulsion & Power Optimization Using OPTI-DP (s) – Petra Stoltenkamp, Wartsila

OPTI-DP optimizes vessel designs to support efficiency (decarbonisation) and effectiveness using their detailed thruster knowledge, 360° hull analysis, and power optimization.?The two examples adjusted thruster size and number to improve capability & efficiency, and reduce capital equipment expenditure & weight.?It highlighted the effectiveness of the 8° tilt to reduce thruster and hull interaction, and used the Wartsila LLC.??

Electric Voith Schneider Propulsion (s) – Dirk Juergens, Voith USA

The electric motor is now built into the thruster to give even better efficiency, and lower total cost & complexity.?He showed the impressive roll stabilization, and the improved operating envelope that the responsive thruster can give when very tight position keeping is needed (vs. a 3rpm azi).?Roll stabilization was reported to not reduce efficiency much when underway.?Hull interaction losses?

Submarine Rescue from a DP Vessel (s) – Liz Hunter, Oceaneering

The US Navy has a modular submarine rescue package that it keeps ready to fly out and quickly install on presurveyed DP vessels around the world.?They aim to provide aid to distressed submarines worldwide in less than three days.?She showed an example of outfitting and testing the rescue package on a DP2 OSV (24hrs?).?It’s an impressive operation.?Submarines have standard connections to allow these rescues.

Day 2, Lunch Presentation:

School for ROCK – Joey Fisher, M3

This was cryptically mentioned in Day 1, when Joey received his award.?The School for the Retention Of (DP) Critical Knowledge has been running in prototype for two and a half years and they are opening it up generally.?They talked through TechOps, section by section, lessons learned, and risk management for an hour a week (7:30AM Central Time, Sunday) to increase understanding.?They have a website (https://www.schoolforrock.org) where you can apply for access and where they plan to make the past sessions available.?This looks valuable.??

Day 2, Session 7 – Power 2:

Electric Energy Storage Systems – Kevin Comeau, ModuResources

With IMO looking to reduce CO2 emissions by 49% by 2030, the marine industry is in a squeeze.?Ships still need power, the engines can’t be optimized much more, and alternative fuels are up in the air, so Kevin recommends battery energy storage systems to improve diesel electric efficiency and fault resistance.?I’m concerned when I see people expecting unmaintained offshore breakers to quickly and reliably clear faults.?Batteries on each main bus will not let you operate redundantly on their own , but they improve open bus efficiency and effectiveness, and be can used to support (bus ESSs) or ensure closed bus redundancy (critical VSD ESSs).

Systemized DP Vessel Cross-Connection Testing (s) – Mark Craig, OneStep Power Solutions

Testing the protection effectiveness of combined DC power supplies is fundamental to ensuring the effective redundancy of many modern control systems.?Properly implemented, these are an effective and proven technology, but components go bad and mistakes are sometimes made.?It’s a pain to test this manually, but OneStep’s DCShortCUT makes this much easier.?Problems found have included failed protections, oversized supplies and undersized wires (dip), weak power supplies (enough for SC but not OL trips), and wrong breaker type.?Mark didn’t want to seem self-serving when asked “How often this should be tested?”?I’d estimate that redundancy critical protection relays should be tested annually for DP2.?You don’t want to hear about DP3.?This being the offshore, people might do it every five years, and take their chances.?People forget that these modules age, go bad, and get played with.?This is a good product that makes performing an important due diligence task much easier, so go do the work.

Improving the Open/Closed Bus Integrity Gap (s) – Steven Cargill, DNV Consulting

There were a lot of names and companies associated with this presentation and the workshop had a similar session, so this reflects a major push to achieve effectively redundant closed bus.?There are gaps in design, testing, maintenance, operation, and comprehension that need to be reduced in both configurations and progress is being made.?We are told there is increasing environmental argument for closed bus, and FMEAs can’t be used to examine functional faults.?I think the gaps need closed for both, as open is the fallback to a closed bus failure and closed bus redundancy is more expensive to achieve and maintain, especially for DP3 probabilities.?Environmental goals can be achieved in either configuration, other industries have no problems having FMEAs look at functions, and I worry about STPA as a shortcut.?Despite these minor disagreements, it was good and showed the valuable and continued work to identify and manage risks to overall industry safe and redundant DP operation.

Day 2, Session 8 – Cybersecurity & Risk:

Cyber Security and Threat Resilience Design (s) – Ed Bourgeau, Requiron Engineering & Marine

Ed was looking at controlling system security and covered many of the basic principles.?Many components are multiuse and it is possible for their intended use to be changed by others, unintentionally by users, or as a result of faults.?For example, a one-way serial to Ethernet convertor, used to keep a control system safe from external threats, could be switched to two-way mode and used to access, change, or expose that control system to other faults.?He recommended specialized rather than multiuse products to avoid this happening.?This presentation is all the more important in the light of IMCAM259.

DGNSS Hardening – Stewart Gillies, ABL-Group

Purposeful jamming & spoofing is usually criminal or military, but radio faults can be similar. Jamming is most dangerous when it is a strong as the DGPS signals, corrupts the information received, and affects the position solution.?A badly affected ship was miles away from a test.?Improved signals, constellations, antennas, INS, and processing help harden against faults, but the crew needs to be aware of the possibility, ready to identify faults, and able to operate without DGNSS while they are unreliable.??

OCIMF DP FMEA Assurance Application (s) – Bolshoy Bhattacharya, DNV Consulting

This presented two examples of vessels analyzed via the OCIMF methodology and tools.?Assurance summary documents were produced that identified gaps and summarized findings in heat maps.??A vessel with a completed OCIMF FMEA assurance document was shown to take far less time to verify.?The tools look useful and intuitive, after some initial familiarity and assuming underlying deep industry understanding.?I’m concerned that misuse of the tools could be used to conceal, and about potential subjectivity.?Practice has moved back towards my original redundancy table format.?D102 was awkward for more than 2 groups.

Concerns From Discussions:

I spoke to a number of vendors and ship owners who reported putting a lot of time and effort into producing redundant DP2 closed bus power plants that were then rejected by clients and heard a lot of frustration.?I rejected the closed bus section of an FMEA, the week before, because the designers and analysts clearly didn’t know what was required.?I wish I had time to investigate each example, as some probably did not know what was involved, but others were people that I thought were competent.?We are still suffering from miscomprehension, but I am less sure that it is all in one direction.?The total added risk from closing the bus tie only needs to be less likely than fire or flood to meet DP2 criteria.?I suspect DP3 closed bus is uneconomic, but DP2 closed bus should be achievable.?This and another concern were previously discussed, but it’s worth flagging again.?Are the salesmen drowning out our message??Have we become risk adverse??It’s worth considering.?I hope to take a future look.

Conclusion:?So ends another summary that was far too long and far too opinionated.?You were warned that these were personal takes.?If you weren’t able to attend the conference, the full content of the excellent papers and presentations will not be available until MTS releases them (usually a year).?I hope that you have been able to glean some useful thoughts and identify issues you want to follow up on.?Better information is available on the authors and the session leads in the 2022 MTS DP Conference Program.

Next week:?Introduction to IMCAM259 Concerns