Recently, the world's largest power generation capacity floating vertical tidal power station "Hai Neng-III" ran successfully in Guishan channel of Daishan County of Zhejiang Province. this system is the achievement of cooperative innovation. Harbin Engineering University is the overall design units with independent intellectual property which ranks the international advanced level.

Recently, the "numerical tank" developped by the Harbin Engineering University "deep ocean engineering and high-tech ship collaborative innovation center" has aroused extensive attention after being reported by the media. Why did this project draw so much attention? What is the experience of HEU collaborative innovation? With these questions, reporters made an exclusive interview on the president Professor Liu Zhigang.

In Liu Zhigang’s office, in addition to documents, books and several refined models of ship, the most attractive thing is the "super large" version of "world ocean map" hanging on the wall in a width of about 4 meters. Liu Zhigang apparently noticed reporters’ "excitement", the subject then started from this "world ocean map".

First of All to Become “World Power in Shipbuilding”

"Marine accountes for 70 percent of the earth, but people tend to pay more attention on land, even if they mention about the marine, what often come into their mind are fishing and transportation." Liu Zhigang said, in fact, resources the ocean contains range from fish, oil, natural gas to abundant mineral, tidal and wave energy. All these are precious resources which can decide the survival and development of mankind future. When the land resources can not meet need of human survival and development, people are bound to turn the future survival and development to the sea. "In the long run, facing the ocean to seek survival and development is our first choice!"

The report of the eighteenth National People's Congress put forward "build marine power" which stressed the capability to improve the exploitation of marine resources, develop marine economy, protect marine ecological environment and resolutely safeguard the national marine rights and interests. "Harbin Engineering University has been engaged in studies concerning ship and marine engineering. We have been paying close attention to marine development and the shipbuilding industry of our country. Our university emphasizes the concept of 'blue ocean territory' each year when new students come to school, hoping to strengthen their marine consciousness, deepen the 'ocean territory' cognition and strengthen the sense of urgency and mission in the construction of maritime power." Liu Zhigang said.

How to realize the strategic goal of marine power? "In my opinion, to be a world power in shipbuilding is the prerequisite and fundation for the marine power, or is the route one must take. Only if we become a shipbuilding power, can we be a maritime power." Liu Zhigang said.
 

Since the reform and openning up policy, our country's shipbuilding industry realized leap frog development after 30 years’ unremitting efforts, extremely hard and bitter struggle,. To 2010, we have become the world's largest shipbuilding country. Liu Zhigang said, this is a great thing to be proud of. But also we must see that as the comprehensive strategic industry featuring broad participation in international market competition, the problem of China's shipbuilding industry at present is "big but not strong". First is the lack of capacity of independent innovation, the innovation mode is still inferior to advanced countries. High-tech ship, such as ultra large container ships, the design and construction capacity of large LNG ship (LNG) is obviously behind South Korea. In the deep ocean engineering area, the design of many offshore floating platform is still blank, repair equipment for underwater production is mainly dependent on the inlet. Secondly, our supporting ability is insufficient; shipping marine equipment localization rate is far lower than Japan and Korea. Supporting deficiency restricts the development of shipping industry. For example, marine engine production mainly relies on the introduction of foreign patents; we still have no real sense of independent brand engine. The situation in marine industry competition and the world technological change is getting more urgent. The national is in dire need to be a sea power, therefore tasks of restructuring and upgrading of the ship industry is extremely urgent and arduous.

Grow in "Collaborative Innovation"

"Born in the sea, the grow in the sea and serve in the sea", this is a true portrayal of the Harbin Engineering University. Harbin Engineering University features the "three-sea plus a nuclear", namely the shipbuilding industry, ship equipment, marine exploitation and application of nuclear energy, the mission of the university is to closely revolve around the shipbuilding industry, ship equipment, marine engineering and nuclear technology, cultivate high-end talent and carry out scientific research. Over the years, in addition to cultivating talents for the industry, our university also vigorously carried out basic research and made a series of important results through in-depth cooperation and collaborative research with enterprise. For example, the development of DP3 dynamic positioning system in cooperation with CNOOC engineering company, over 120 meters self-elevating drilling platform jointly developed with Dalian shipbuilding industry corporation, and Deep water semi-submersible platform in cooperation with CIMC Raffles group, which filled many gaps.

When talking about what kind of institutional mechanism innovation do we still need to support shipbuilding power, Liu Zhigang said, the answer lies in the word "collaboration". Collaboration is the method and way, while innovation is the objective and the result. In this historical process, the university and the enterprise need to share weal and woe, integrate in depth, complement each other and coordinate comprehensivly. As one of the achievements of innovation, the "deep ocean engineering and high-tech ship collaborative innovation center" initially directed by Harbin Engineering University has been identified as Ministry level of collaborative innovation center.

"Collaborative innovation" is the advanced stage of "the combination of production, study and research". Because of institutional constraints, the cooperation in the past is restricted to a single project, or technology transfer is usually confined to cooperation on a point. However, collaborative innovation is organic fusion and long-term cooperation between university, enterprise and institute, which stresses breaking down barriers, emphasizing the integration of resources. And that will definitely promote the reform of institutional mechanism.

Relying on the “Deep Ocean Engineering and High Tech Collaborative Innovation Center” to Realize “Collaboration”

“Collaborative innovation needs to have breakthrough and change out of keeping the institution and mechanism”, said Liu Zhigang, “the most important of all is to consider the redesign of rules in order to make it beneficial for collaboration and innovation”. The design of system is not a tough thing, but how to make the “effective system” into “system effective” needs to be seriously considered and explored. Harbin Engineering University fights ceaselessly in the practice and summarizes a road towards the collaborative innovation in the field, including the new scientific research mechanism “JIP+JDP” (JIP, Joint Industry Program; JDP, Joint Development Program). We have made a talent cultivation mechanism of “teach in researches, university and enterprise cooperate”, and a talent gathering mechanism of “task-oriented, profession and pluralism combination, multiple assessment appointment”. These two mechanism aim to build an integrated resources sharing mechanism in which research and development represent, and a multi-level, multi-angle international coordination mechanism, forming three cluster advantages, including cross-region, innovation chain and civil-military coordination.

The key factor of collaborative innovation is whether the elements of innovation can have effective collaboration. “This requires constant exploration and practice, the construction of the collaborative innovation center is one of exploration”, said Liu Zhigang, “Through the construction and operation of the Deep Ocean Engineering and High Tech Collaborative Innovation Center, our understandings are deepened; The innovation center is a green path to push collaborative innovation, which is an exploration pattern to further collaborative innovation. Through special design of rules, it can promote the reform of cooperative institutional mechanism, and achieve the real collaborative innovation of industry-university-research cooperation. The collaborative innovation center is also a base to cultivate high-end talent collaboratively with its ultimate purpose of serving talent trainning.

“How to make this ‘collaboration’ be the ‘real collaboration’ in chemical equation, and make it the ‘organic combination’ instead of ‘physical combination’?”, Liu Zhigang said, “The collaborative innovation center can break the basic research context and share research results in the system design level". Through formulating policies and signing agreements, it can share out the work and cooperate with one another. In the reality of the cooperation level, it can make reasonable allocation of stock resources and incremental resources through a unified rule, to share benefits and opportunities, and bring mutual trust among unit members. Meanwhile, the collaborative center pays attention to motivate the initiative of personnel, that is, in this open platform, personnel can be employed cross-units, and flow without transferring. Personnel get paid according to their contributions, and go no matter where with their missions in hand. The complete incentive, guarantee system, and the internal governance mechanism play significant role in regulating its functions.

“It is not difficult to test a program whether the collaborative innovation is real or not”, Liu Zhigang said, “We can test by seeing whether the collaborative innovation fulfills our country’s grand demand, completes major tasks, makes major breakthroughs, or brings great benefits.”

Numerical pool (Link)

The basic principle of numerical pool is to use the computer simulation of fluid flow software to resolve the fluid motion equations and simulate the ocean structure movement and stress, to achieve or even beyond the physical pool functions, so as to design a better ship form and deep ocean platform. The technology is the most important supporting technology divert from physical pool test to virtual simulation test, and also the revolutionary turning stone of changing the methods of shipbuilding and oceanography engineering equipment designing.