Lowering Underwater Noise Radiation From Waterborne Transport

Scope:

LOWNOISER is a new innovation action project funded by the European Commission’s Horizon European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101192302. The project with an overall budget of €6.33 over 4 years aims to bring the effort towards quieter ocean closer to reality.

The objectives of the LOWNOISER project are to demonstrate reliable and durable reductions to the Underwater Radiated Noise (URN) of ships using technologies that are either readily available or that can be adapted for the purpose, to develop monitoring technologies to ensure that ships are operated quietly across their operational profile and throughout their lifetime, provide a rational set of instruments and guidelines for the design and certification of silent ships and regulate their operation. The noise abatement solutions that the consortium will consider could be applied to new builds, retrofits and to ships while in operation. The project will consider the physics of underwater noise generation, transmission and propagation to identify critical aspects that the solutions (technologies, measures and strategies) the project will propose need to tackle  to succeed in reducing URN. 

The specific Objectives of LOWNOISER project are:

  1. Identification and Evaluation of the different URN reduction solutions (i.e. combinations of technologies, measures and management strategies)
  2. Providing the tools to predict the impact of the URN reduction solutions that designers, regulators and operators would adopt. The project will identify the noise sources (primarily engines, gears and propellers) and the methods that are available to study them and combine them in a rational way to close the gaps that are present in the knowledge of noise production by ships.
  3. Feedback mechanism to ensure that the noise reductions that are achieved by the proposed solution are reliable and durable through full scale monitoring to provide validation to the work performed. 
    The core of LOWNOISER are its 5 demonstrators, which are all either full scale or large scale.
  4. Long term onboard monitoring of the noise levels and development of feedback system for optimal operation of one or two oil tankers to validate the radiated noise predictions and also that the ship can be operated optimally from the noise emission point of view using the system that will be developed in the scope of work of this objective.
  5. The Hurtigruten's Cruise Vessel Roald Amundsen will be used as a testbench for monitoring URN and implement noise reduction measures specifically tailored for operations in areas that are vulnerable to anthropogenic noise sources. The demonstrator seeks at showing how URN reduction can be achieved by optimizing the operation of the vessel via tailored control of its propulsive system assisted by on-board monitoring.  
  6. Demonstrate the the compound effect of the GHG emissions reduction and noise abatement
  7. Deployment of self-tuning damper to lessen the transmission of vibrations form the engine to the hull and thence to the marine environment. The demonstrator will be a large scale test rig in which the boundary conditions of the tests can be tightly controlled.
  8. DAS (distributed acoustic sensor) to provide the control loop to specific objects to test a technology that can be used to monitor the acoustic levels in areas of high traffic or special interest for their compliance with their acoustic class.
  9. Evaluate the effectiveness of the noise abatment solutions, not only for their absolute value, but also in relation to costs and ship safety

Work Packages

  1. Project and innovation management  (MCT)
  2. Dev. of methods and models for ship URN prediction and its impact on marine life (VTT)
  3. Noise mitigation prediction design and off-design conditions (SO)
  4. Monitoring and operational noise mitigation measures (TSI)
  5. Large scale retrofit demonstrations (KMAS)
  6. Demonstrations of the effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness (SO)
  7. Regulatory and development of guidelines (LR)
  8. Dissemination, communication and exploitation (MCT)

Duration

2025 - 2028

Partners

  1. Maritime CleanTech (MCT),Norway
  2. Teknologian Tutkimuskeskus (VTT OY), Finland
  3. SINTEF Ocean (SO),Norway
  4. Técnicas Y Servicios De IngenierÍa SL (TSI), Spain
  5. Kongsberg Maritime AS (KM), Norway
  6. Hurtigruten Expeditions (HX), Germany
  7. Ibaizabal Tankers SL (IBT)(, Spain
  8. Alfa Laval Rotterdam B.V (ALFA), Holland
  9. Vibrol OY (VOY), Finland
  10. Bergen Engines AS (BE), Norway
  11. Istituto Nazionale Di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Italy
  12. Lloyds Register EMEA (LR EMEA), UK
  13. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Italy
  14. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Spain
  15. Bureau Veritas (BV), Portugal

Funding:

 

 

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe  research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101192302

Find out more

Discover more about this project at the LOWNOISER website.