GE offers a comprehensive suite of marine gas turbine, digital analytics and maintenance solutions for commercial ships, as announced at Gastech – the leading exhibition and conference for the global gas, LNG and energy industries taking place 17-20 September in Barcelona, Spain.
LR recently granted GE Approval in Principle (AiP) as ‘Digital Twin READY’ for GE’s Predix Asset Performance Management.
Luis Benito, LR’s Innovation & Co-creation Director – Marine & Offshore said, “As the first classification society to operate in this space, we have worked collaboratively with other industry leaders to deliver our first pilot project - an approval in principle to the first level of Digital Compliance: ‘Digital Twin READY’ to GE Aviation. Defining the process for approving the output of a digital twin is the industry’s first step on a journey toward a truly digitalized classification service where we build trust in data to understand asset health over time.”
GE’s LM2500 aeroderivative gas turbine - a modified jet engine - was the asset used to pilot through LR's digital compliance framework. “By using the LM2500 engine, we demonstrated to LR exactly how GE designs, builds, and operates the digital twin,” said GE’s Brien Bolsinger, Vice President, General Manager, Evendale, Ohio, USA.
“The digital twin provides a rich, constantly evolving picture of machine health and operations, capturing everything from components to functions and entire processes for the asset. Digital twin can be further expanded to the propulsion plant and other areas on the ship, giving both a ship- and fleet-level view for the owner,” Bolsinger added.
In addition, pilot projects are now underway with the United States to employ digital twins on military ships; other international navies are considering how to use digital twins to analyse the health of ship assets.