How to make ships possess better hydrodynamic technology and meet the needs of “green” and “low carbon” ship transportation of ship owners from domestic and abroad? Under the efforts of the Deep Ocean Engineering and High-tech Shipbuilding Collaborative Innovation Center, Numerical Tank Topside Research International Experts Consultation was held from March 15 to 16 in Harbin Engineering University (HEU) . Hydrodynamic Experts  in the field of shipbuilding and ocean engineering who were in the top level of world numerical tank research gathered together in HEU to give advices for the university-lead numerical tank topside research project of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and discuss the research directions, routes and goals of digital basin adapting the industry development.

President Liu Zhigang gave welcome remarks on the opening ceremony. He said, Chinese and foreign experts’ coming to HEU to discuss the development of computationalfluidmechanics technology in the field of shipbuilding and ocean engineering and research routes and goals of numerical tank would play a positive role in the development of shipbuilding and ocean engineering computationalfluidmechanics and further enhance the university’s talents training and scientific research in this field. He expressed his hope to take the meeting as an opportunity to further strengthen international exchanges and cooperation and improve technology of shipbuilding and ocean engineering.

Vice president Xia Guihua introduced the background of the project and the main task of forming an international class experts group to give preliminary consultation to the major special project of numerical tank.
HEU professor Duan Wenyang, one of Changjiang Scholars hosted the meeting.

After 2 days’ open discussion, experts reached agreements in the aspects of the development direction and key research subject of numerical tank. Experts thought that facing a number of key problems in the field of shipbuilding and ocean engineering needed to be solved, numerical tank technology needs to develop. They also had a further discussion about research subject which needed to be carried out of three innovation research directions in computationalfluidmechanics.

Numerical tank topside research project was the national key innovation task organized and implemented by relevant institutions through the Deep Ocean Engineering and High-tech Shipbuilding Collaborative Innovation Center. For requirements of developing high-tech ships, researching and developing new ocean engineering equipments and establishing marine power, the project independently developed digital basin technology, and had a clear understanding of the key technology, research route and developmental stage. It planed the whole system composition, types and function of modules of the numerical tank, and constructed application platform of the numerical tank which could meet every user’s need. The project hired world famous experts who attended the meeting to form international experts consultation.

Background:

For a long time, the research of hydrodynamicperformance, which is the basis of shipbuilding and ocean structure general technology, is mainly achieved by physical pool module test. As the development of high-tech ship and the appearance of different types of new deep sea structures, the construction of physical pool could no longer meet the development requirement of technology and could not adapt to the time. In the past 20 years, the development of computationalfluidmechanics and the improvement of computers’ soft and hardware conditions made up the insufficient of physical pool test, strengthened the competitiveness of shipbuilding industry and shipping business, established a efficient integratedsystem of hydrodynamics analysis and advancement and enhanced the quality of shipbuilding. The numerical tank has been major supporting technology of the development of shipbuilding power in the world.

Compared with traditional physical pool test, the numerical tank technology has more obvious advantages in the aspects of meeting the rapidly changing needs of practical marine navigation and service. Nowadays, the numerical tank concept of thehydrodynamics technological advanced countries such as America not just remain at the level of simulation physical pool, but turn to simulate real ships navigating in the sea and choose a energy saving, safe and comfortable navigation rout under forecasting dynamic response when navigating in different sailing rout combining marine meteorological forecast.