Digitalization has become a key aspect of making maritime industries more innovative, efficient, and fit for future operations. One of the most attractive aspects is the concept of digital twins , which refers to digital replicas of physical assets, processes, and systems that can be used as advanced tools for design, operation, and maintenance. This article introduces the development of the digital twin of the research vessel (RV) Gunnerus in Norway, which will be a significant scientific and operational achievement for the maritime industry, making efficient and safe offshore operations possible. It enables data exchange safely and easily among different subsystems, modules, and various applications. Thus, the twin ship can provide an integrated view of the ship’s various physical and behavioral aspects in different stages and allow simultaneous optimization of functional performance requirements. In addition, it enables advanced control and optimization, e.g., creating more reliable prediction for flexible objectives (time, output, emissions, fuel consumption), and executing day-ahead and long-term planning for operations. Several related applications are presented in the end to confirm the effectiveness of the digital twin ship system.

The conventional approach to dynamic analysis of ship motion response with shipboard operation equipment is usually done by establishing combined equations of motion of the multi-body system. The weakness of such methods is usually associated with the effectiveness of modelling and the simulation efficiency of computing the dynamic ship responses in waves in the time domain. In recent years, time domain simulation of nonlinear ship motion response in waves has become more and more popular. In this paper, we present coupled simulation of a heavy load crane with interactive ship motion responses in waves. The static gravitational forces of the crane system and dynamic excitation forces from the payload are applied to the ship as external forces on varying attack points of the hull during crane operations. Simulation of the crane operation is implemented in the digital twin ship platform and demonstrated meaningful physical behaviours.

Modern winch systems have become increasingly complex with hybrid power systems, intelligent control systems, and lightweight synthetic cables with complicated traction and handling mechanisms. During the early design phase, it is hard to manage a large set of parameters for system design exploration and optimisation by traditional trial-and-error approaches. Virtual prototyping provides the users with numerous risk-free possibilities to evaluate the design trade-offs and immediately know the results of any modification. This requires flexible, effective modelling of the dynamic system and efficient handling of the simulation. This paper presents the implementation of a virtual winch prototyping tool for maritime winch design and operations. Model development and setups for co-simulation are described based on an active heave compensated winch with secondary control. Simulation management and user interface are implemented based on web technology and connected to the functional mock-up units as clients through the WebSocket protocol.