Page 24: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (June 2024)

DIGITALIZATION

FMD

TAPS THE POWER OF

All images courtesy FMD

DIGITAL

TWINS

The advent of digital twin technol- ogy is spreading across maritime as companies seeking to harness the power and promise digitalization.

Trey Taylor, Director of Digital In- novation, Fairbanks Morse Defense (FMD), discusses the evolution of its own digital twin technology, high- lighting its capabilities as a tool in real-time engineering support and its ability to generate action.

By Greg Trauthwein igital Twin’ is a term increasingly common maintenance team onboard, to land-based engineering support term in maritime, a core tenant of the digi- inclusive of OEMs, to solve problems, to relieve maintenance talization discussion. But what exactly does activities, to give systems more ‘up’ time.

‘D ‘digital twin’ mean, and more importantly, how can it be leveraged to enhance ship ef? ciency? A Call to Action “We recognize two different approaches to digital twins,” Digital twins are not just about the data, it’s about deploy- said Taylor. “One we call a simulation, or a digital twin that ing information to result in actionable items. “We build sys- is projecting forward the way a system performs, based on tems that try to reduce the cognitive burden of the people that choices you make, digitally. It’s a way to simulate outputs and are operating the system,” said Taylor. “The digital twin will outcomes of different systems’ con? gurations without risking make recommendation. If I’m going to go 20 knots for 16 a capital asset. The second type is what we call an operational hours in four-foot seas, I can enter those paradigms and it twin, a one-for-one representation of the active system as it make a recommendation on the power plant con? guration.” is performing right now. That lets me take an end-user into A more mundane but equally important use of digital twin a capital system, like a power plant, and have them see all of tech for FMD is for the general overview and maintenance of the pressures, temperatures, monitoring, all the power plant Navy ship engines. “We monitor that data in real time and pro- working together in real time from anywhere in the world.” vide a visualization tool to the Navy so they could see what’s

From where Taylor sits, digital twins are collaborative happening in that engine external to the PLC. We have some tools: one is in design, con? guration, and scoping, the other AI ML in there that helps recognize when there might be a in operations and maintenance. Ultimately, it comes down to problem. So that we can, before the system alerts, create an getting the entire technical team – from the operational and awareness that “hey, something is changing in your system. 24 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • June 2024

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