Pioneering Concepts Turned into Reality

Economic recovery starts with innovation. And innovation starts with new ideas and new concepts. But innovation also starts with a thorough insight into the problems and challenges of daily life.

Pioneering Concepts Turned into Reality
Although it may not be the popular perception, many inventors were regular people: they simply tried to find solutions for the problems and challenges they encountered.
The same holds for innovation in the maritime world: real innovations are directly coupled to the operational problems people experience. This brings us innovative motion compensation systems to improve operability in waves or new propulsion systems to improve energy efficiency.

The fact that there is a strong link between operation and new innovative concepts brought MARIN to the conclusion that they should be more involved in the whole development chain of ships and offshore structures. Most of their work now is focused on the design and engineering phase. However, in this phase a lot is fixed already.

Large modifications are generally not possible anymore. That is why MARIN is steadily trying to move into a broader role: from concept development through to design and engineering process to operation. The first steps along this path have been described in the Report below.

This development is why MARIN is transforming its former High Speed Basin into a Concept Basin with a new wave generator, carriage control and model shop. This allows more low cost model tests at an early phase of the development and makes sure the concept is moving in the right direction. To support the Dutch Maritime cluster, MARIN even offer six free basin slots for innovative small and medium sized enterprises to try out their new concept ideas.

Read the Report

 

[mappress]
Press Release, January 17, 2014