“Sailing Café” : Digital Twin in competitive sailing and maritime transport

For its sixth Sailing Café, held on 10 October, Bretagne Développement Innovation brought together a trio of engineers to discuss digital twins: Sylvain Faguet, sales director of D-ICE Engineering, whose steering optimisation systems are used on board the sailing cargo ships Canopée and Neoline; Pierre Monfort, director of the ship performance business unit at OSE Engineering, which develops digital tools for the maritime industry; and Xavier Guisnel, engineering coordinator at the naval architecture firm VPLP Design.

By way of introduction, it might be useful to explain the term ‘digital twin’, which comes from industry. Pierre Monfort defines it as ‘the digital representation of a physical system’ on which, says Xavier Guisnel, ‘the focus can be on performance, structure or the energy chain’. All this is used ‘to understand how the ship behaves in real conditions’, adds Sylvain Faguet.

VPPs (speed prediction programs), which are used for routing, are the best-known model, but ‘with the constant increase in computing power, we are getting closer every day to a true digital twin of the real system’, says Pierre Monfort. While it is possible to obtain answers and predict behavior, all our experts agree that the perfect twin ‘is still a utopian dream’, says Pierre Monfort. Sylvain Faguet confirms that while ‘in 3D modeling’ we’re getting really close’, in terms of dynamic behaviour, it’s more complicated. ‘But we’re working on it!’ smiles Xavier Guisnel.

In any case, the field of application for these digital twins is immense, and there is no shortage of concrete examples. At D-ICE Engineering, ‘the digital twin is at the heart of our system, which calculates the best route according to waves, wind, operational constraints and consumption,’ explains Sylvain Faguet. The digital twin is fed by different models that we assemble: forward resistance, dunnage, wind thrust, propulsion chain, etc.’

The same logic applies to Pierre Monfort on the MerVent project for a sailing container ship, for which OSE Engineering is developing ‘energy optimisation software whose recommendations to the crew are based on the digital twin’. Xavier Guisnel points out that there can be ‘several digital twins for the same ship depending on the subject we are dealing with, dynamic behavior or performance’, for example, and that we can ‘plug in systems such as the autopilot to get as close as possible to the real thing’.

Conversely, the digital twin also feeds off the real thing, with Pierre Monfort urging his customers to fit their ships with sensors ‘to collect data and feed it into the digital twin, which will then become more accurate over the life of the ship’. At VPLP Design, we are also paying close attention, because as the real system evolves, it is imperative to ‘communicate well to maintain a perfect twin’. However, certain blind spots remain difficult to illuminate, such as the level of cleanliness of a hull, particularly in shipping. ‘The discrepancy can also come from a manufacturing or engine operating fault,’ adds Sylvain Faguet, not to mention the human factor.

When will we see a digital twin of the skipper coupled with that of his boat? That’s one of the challenges ahead, especially in ocean racing, when the great revolution in shipping is expected to be based on automation. Pierre Monfort can well imagine ‘a skipper supervising 5 boats remotely’. With artificial intelligence, ‘already one of our tools for processing these large volumes of data’ according to Sylvain Faguet, ‘the possibility of constant back-and-forth between the digital twin and the real system should make it possible to enrich both models enormously’, explains Xavier Guisnel.

Ultimately, the digital twin is becoming more and more ‘an opportunity for the end customer to reduce shipping costs or increase the performance of a racing boat’, concludes Pierre Monfort.