HEU’s vice President Xia Guihua: China and Russia can Strengthen the Collaborative Innovation of Marine Engineering Technology in Four Areas

China and Russia are facing the development, utilization and running of ocean, the maintenance of marine rights and interests and formulate common problems such as marine power development strategy. Russia has the abundant technical strength and rich practical experience and China has outstanding ability of shipbuilding and realization of achievements. The two countries’ collaborative innovation in the field of ocean engineering has important strategic significance.

Xia Guihua suggested that China and Russia strengthen their cooperation in the development of new energy exploitation and utilization of marine technology. Marine resources are abundant, clean and renewable energy. It is regarded as one of the most ideal and promising alternative energy sources. It needs both two countries to overcome problems like floating structure coupling system and general design method, the installation and service of marine equipment, electric power transmission, corrosion protection in the process of ocean energy exploitation. In recent years, the Chinese government has invested billions of yuan in ocean energy development, and in 2013 it set up specialized committee for ocean energy of Chinese Renewable Energy Society. Russia has established the tidal energy and wind energy demonstration experiment plant. It has a rich experience in the use of ocean renewable energy. By in-depth cooperation and the market and technology in China and Russia, the overall level of ocean energy utilization in the two countries will increase rapidly.

Xia Guihua suggested that China and Russia should also strengthen their cooperation in the development of carriers in ice areas and platform technology. Despite of the climate change, the arctic route will be opened, and the arctic oil and gas reserves are abundant. Therefore, carriers in ice areas and platform technology are the strategic needs for developing the oil and gas resource in ice areas. The research of carriers in ice areas is faced with problems like research of the navigation in arctic environment, adaptability of marine power system under arctic environment and so on. In research and development of ocean platform in ice areas, it is facing problems like the ice pool model test methods and application technology research and the mooring system in the application research under the arctic sea ice conditions and so on. Russia has obvious advantages on researches related to ice areas and China has the good condition of equipment manufacturing. Cooperation between the two countries will provide guarantee for Russian to carry out the strategy of arctic development.

China and Russia should also strengthen their cooperation in technology of deep sea engineering equipment development. Marine oil and gas resource accounts for one-third of global oil and gas resources; the explored combustible ice reserves is twice that of coal, oil, natural gas; the deep-sea manganese nodules is abundant and the estimated reserves of it is 30 trillion tons and the number keeps growing... Be geared to the need of the deep sea resources development strategy, the two countries can promote innovation cooperation in technologies of deep-water platform , equipment for underwater operation, corrosion protection, underwater vehicle and underwater acoustic communication. Both of them should build a technology system of research and development on three-dimensional equipment and provide equipment support for the development of deep sea resources , especially for oil and gas resources.

Professor Xia Guihua suggested that Russia and China should also strengthen the cooperation in the field of numerical pool technology. Numerical pool test has become a necessary means to exploit, and design the equipment of new naval architecture and ocean engineering and to analyze and predict its hydrodynamic performance during the operation.It is not only the urgent market demand of shipbuilding and oceanographic engineering industry but also the demand of innovation and development to satisfy the advanced equipment technology of ships and new oceanographic engineering.With the development of computational hydromechanics and the improvement of computer software and hardware conditions, numerical pool will equip computers with hydromechanics software, which can accurately analog the phenomenon, such as extreme stormy waves on the surface, complicated turbulences underwater and so on. On the premise of the same precision, it is more efficient, time-saving and cheaper than physical pool. More importantly, it can realize the optimization of designs, which has extremely important theoretical and engineering significance. Since Russia has accumulated a lot of model data in the long-term experiments, it possesses perfect experimental facilities of naval architecture and ocean engineering physical pool. Cooperation between Russia and China will rapidly improve the designing level and the ability to enhance equipment of new naval architecture and ocean engineering of the two countries, which provides new dynamic for the development and prosperity of marine economy.

In addition, in order to achieve the aim of mutual benefits and win-win, the two countries can promote innovative cooperation in the field of green ships, intelligent ships, digital ships, marine power, marine new materials and so on.     In terms of the cooperation pattern, Professor Xia Guihua suggested that except for the marine cooperation agreement signed in accordance with the two countries’ governments and the measures to exchange scholar delegation to form cooperation project, organize joint scientific experiments and maritime investigation, exchange experimental data, research results, technological information and documents, provide equipment and related services to each other, hold training classes and seminars and apply for the international bidding projects together, Russia and China, the two countries should also establish the mutual visiting mechanism of the top managers among the various classes of governments, a special funds for researches and a joint research institutions and research team, which can truly push the cooperation on the field of oceanographic engineering.