Page 36: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (August 2023)

INTERVIEW: DON MACPHERSON

HydroComp is a well-established, small engineering ? rm focused on hydrodynamic and propulsion system simulation, providing design tools for engineers and naval architects to focus on vessel performance, including emissions. Don

MacPherson, HydroComp’s long-tenured Technical Director, discusses the impacts of tightening emissions regulations, with insights on maximizing new vessel designs and re? ts.

By Greg Trauthwein tions to do for that particular ship group. But a small company

Don, maritime has been in the crosshairs of reg- running one ship has to do exactly the same level of effort, and ulators to reduce emissions. What do you see as it's an onerous task. the top new regulatory issues that are impact-

There are, in my opinion, simpler methodologies using reduced ing ship and boat design, and owners, today?

order methods that achieve the same end. They're grounded in

What I'm seeing may be a bit of a contrarian stance and per- spective. We've had an opportunity as a solution provider for empirical testing and they ful? ll the same objectives.

For years, I've personally questioned the merits and the ap- many years to participate in a number of regulatory working groups for emissions in a broader sense. Both the greenhouse propriateness of class societies developing the regulations them- selves, and also providing services to ful? ll those regulations. gas emission side, but also in the emerging aspects of under-

I know there are ? rewalls between the different groups and water radiated noise. And I've seen some things that make me it's not a big problem, but the unnecessary complicatedness of question objectives and motivations, not that the people in- the EEXI calculations speaks to maybe there's a simpler way volved are not well intended, certainly they're intelligent. to achieve that. And if what you're after is broad compliance, you want to make things as easy as possible.

What, exactly do you mean?

There seems to be a tendency to focus on a methodology;

I would use the term orthodoxy in some cases, but that might At the outset you mentioned underwater noise.

What’s Hydrocomp’s involvement in that area?

not be fair in this particular instance. They're focusing on how

We've been working with a couple international groups on to do compliance, rather than trying to achieve broad compli- formally developing compliance regulations for underwa- ance with simpler methods; for example, the EEXI calcula- tions that are prevalent right now. Those are a pretty tightly ter radiated noise. There are people on the regulatory side, people in the biological sciences side, and then there are en- controlled set of calculations through the various class agen- gineers and naval architects like myself. For whatever reason, cies, prescribing a calculation approach using speci? c types of

CFD calculation. The people providing the calculations have this group is hung up on empirical testing as the way to ful- ? ll compliance, as opposed to what I would term rules-based to show a competency through experience and validation cal- culations; that is technically valid, I understand the objectives compliance.

I understand how they get there, because noise has always of that. They want to make sure that everything is appropriate been tested, but interior noise testing for human response is and in a comparative way across the board; but it's unneces- very different than broad propagating radiated noise of a va- sarily complicated.

riety of different biological receptors. All the different marine

The lower limit of the bandwidth of companies that are go- ing to have to consider this [are for vessels] as small as 400 mammals and sea life that are going to be affected by a ship's radiated noise. It's not the same thing.

gross tons, and that's not a very big ship. We have one com-

You can take a pelican case with equipment and you can pany we work with, a big international bulk carrier company, bring it to any ship and do interior testing functionally. Com- with four ships that are exactly the same: same hull; same pro- pletely appropriate to do that as a test-base system. pulsion plants; same missions. They have one set of calcula- 36 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • August 2023

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