Riviera Maritime Media visited BMT’s training centre in England following DNV’s certification of four fully networked tug wheelhouse and one ship full bridge navigation simulator
Pilots and tug masters can practice scenarios, enhance ship manoeuvring and improve their competence and co-ordination on network-linked bridge simulators.
BMT has gained approval from class society DNV for its multi-bridge training facilities in Fareham, UK, used by tug masters and pilots to practice handling large vessels in tight docks and harbours.
BMT maritime products director Phil Thompson says this facility will be upgraded with an updated full mission bridge simulator and the whole package could be replicated in other academies and facilities.
BMT’s expanded UK training centre on the English south coast includes two DNV Class A fully enclosed 360° bridges and two Class A 270° visualisation simulators used for tug master training, all networked to a full-mission DNV Class A bridge simulator for ship navigation.
This five-bridge training centre improves ship-tug interaction, towage and vessel pilotage, enhancing operational safety during ship escort, manoeuvring and berthing.
It is used for a wide range of commercial and naval stakeholders, including the UK Ministry of Defence, with UK Admiralty pilots and Serco tug masters training together.
Riviera Maritime Media visited the facilities and tested out the 360° tug simulator on a scenario based in Jebel Ali, United Arab Emirates. During this simulation, a tug master would encounter six degrees of freedom and various weather and sea states to simulate real-life operations around various ships.
Dr Thompson says these simulators use DNV-accredited version 7 of BMT Rembrandt software to provide the high fidelity and realism, with the additional four tug simulator systems set up by Birkenhead, UK-based MPE Ltd in just three weeks in December 2022.
“Our simulation models have advanced modelling of different ships in various sea states to simulate vessel movements and interactions in detail,” says Dr Thompson. Rembrandt uses International Hydrographic Organisation (IHO) S-100 standards for hydrographic data, enabling high-definition bathymetry information, and dynamic water levels and surface currents.
“Rembrandt processes a much higher level of special and temporal granularity of water levels and tides, bringing a significantly greater degree of situational awareness and environmental realism in training. This is turn provides for greater accuracy in simulating dynamic effects, including bank effects in restricted channels and ship-tug interactions,” he says.
“Accurate modelling tug behaviour can be even more challenging than for larger ships, given the number of complex ship-tug interaction effects.
BMT Rembrandt is used in other simulator training centres and on desktop simulators worldwide to help masters and pilots practice manoeuvres in multiple ports, ship channels, harbours and terminals.
Complex manoeuvres
“We have many installations in ports and terminals worldwide, and several users are already upgrading their Rembrandt systems with S-100 port hydraulic data,” says Dr Thompson. “We have a high turnover of tug masters using the four tug simulators in our UK facility. We are also currently in the process of supplying a Rembrandt 360° workboat simulator to a leading maritime training academy in the UK.”
Pilots and tug masters from Belfast, London, Liverpool, Sheerness, Cromarty, Glasgow and Portsmouth have used Rembrandt and simulators to practise escorting and docking ships in ports and harbours. This includes practising manoeuvring the British Navy’s aircraft carriers in and around ports using S-100 hydraulic models to accurately simulate scenarios and such precision hydraulic data allows the exploration of safe manoeuvres outside of slack water windows.
Rembrandt is widely field tested by a growing, diverse range of maritime stakeholders including commercial shipping, ports, statutory agencies and defence contractors. At least 80 BMT Rembrandt simulators are deployed outside the UK including 30 full-mission bridge simulators in academies in southeast Asia.
This software is also used for simulating and practising complex towage projects. Shell, Chevron and BP have used it to simulate towage of massive offshore structures, such as tension-leg platforms and floating production systems from fabrication yards to the US Gulf. “There could be up to eight tugs towing offshore structures in shallow waters and narrow rivers with complex hydrodynamic forces on structures and tugs,” says Dr Thompson.
“Rembrandt is also used to simulate ship-to-ship transfers of LNG in the Gulf of Guinea and it is installed on many cruise ship fleets to support training and passage planning.”
Accident investigation
Rembrandt is used by leading statutory maritime accident investigation agencies for digital forensics of maritime accidents and to diagnose influencing factors. It is used by the UK’s Maritime Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB), the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Singapore Transport Investigation Board and other counterparts in Australia, Japan, Taiwan and the Netherlands.
Rembrandt interfaces to numerous third-party data sources such as data from voyage data recorders (VDR) and portable pilot units. Rembrandt processes this data to recreate multiple 3D views of an incident.
“Rembrandt fuses vast amounts of data from VDRs, such as differential GPS, radar, ECDIS and audio files and decodes them into standard industry formats to create the 3D reconstruction of one or multiple vessels,” says Dr Thompson.
This permits a VDR-generated 3D investigation of near misses, allisions, collisions or groundings, enabling replays from any viewpoint to identify mistakes or issue points. “People can interact and simulate the incident to learn lessons and better understand the triggering or effect of dynamic interactions, such as those between tugs and ships, or dynamic squat or bank effects,” says Dr Thompson. “They can pause time before and during an incident.”
BMT’s work with the MAIB and NTSB resulted in a particularly useful capability – the ability for a Rembrandt user to “pause and take full control” away from a VDR-generated 3D reconstruction to see if something else could be done to prevent the accident. “This can then be used for training to avoid future similar incidents,” he adds.
The simulation programme, Riviera practiced on in the tug simulator was from a container ship accident in 2017 in Jebel Ali, when the ship struck the terminal quayside collapsing cranes and risking human life and damage.
Riviera also tried the ship navigation simulator and virtual reality unit developed for remote training and simulating bridge wings.
“Rembrandt can help investigators identify pilotage issues and improve operational plans for ports,” says Dr Thompson. It can also stress-test autonomous vessel software, artificial intelligence and algorithms developed for situational awareness, hazard avoidance and collision prevention.
After gaining DNV certification for this five-simulator set-up and Rembrandt platform, BMT is ready to deliver it to other academic institutions. “It is a ready-made blueprint, and with changes in consoles, can be used for multiple vessels including workboats, tugs, fishing vessels, offshore support vessels and commercial ships,” he adds.
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