News

Nature published an article ‘Autonomous ships are on the horizon: here’s what we need to know’ about autonomous ships that highlights research gaps in six key areas. Rudy Negenborn and his co-authors touch upon critical challenges in the development and deployment of autonomous ships in practice, that are not receiving sufficient attention in research and innovation.

A number of internal relocations have taken place in the 3mE building the past year and one of them was the relocation of the Wave-Flume Tank. The tank has been moved from building section J to the API hall nearby in Leeghwaterstraat to create space for projects being conducted in the Fluid Mechanics Lab. The Wave-Flume Tank has returned home: at the Ship Hydromechanics Lab.

The first fully-automated demo of AVATARs - autonomous emission-free waterways vessels - took place on the pond in front of the 3mE building. Three model-scaled vessels neatly demonstrated their manoeuvrability, precision controlled turning and steering capabilities thanks to long-range Wi-Fi and 4G communications and newly-developed AI directed collision-avoidance technology.

At the bottom of the ocean lie lumps of valuable metals such as copper, manganese, nickel and cobalt - materials crucial to accelerating the energy transition. A collaboration between five European countries called ‘Blue Harvesting,’ has designed and now tested a new collector that can gather these nodules from the deep sea bottom with minimal disturbance to the natural environment.

The maritime sector needs batteries for the transition to zero-emission shipping. Different ships with different operational profiles may require different batteries. The NWO Executive Board has awarded funding to two research projects of maritime researchers Henk Polinder and Andrea Coraddu. Both will focus on improving the use of different battery systems. The awards involve a sum of 4.2 million euros.

Gabriel Weymouth has been appointed Professor of Ship Hydromechanics at the department of Maritime and Transport Technology as of 1st of September. Weymouth's research focuses on the development of fast, accurate, and robust computational fluid dynamic predictions and application of those techniques to the marine and maritime environment.

This week the new cavitation tunnel will be opened at TU Delft. The research in this facility, officially called the Multi Phase Flow Tunnel (MPFT), largely focuses on two topics: the problem of cavitation in vessel propellers, on the one hand, and the potential of air lubrication in vessels, on the other.