Institute of High Performance Computing

Maritime Forum

R&D Boost for Maritime Sector with $3.4million Maritime Research Programme

Computational science and engineering (CSE) has become an integral part of product design as well as research and development process, in aiding companies to shorten product development cycles, enhance product performance and quality, and in allowing researchers to evaluate complex, critical and cost-prohibitive systems that would otherwise be unable (or expensive) to be addressed. Over the past years, IHPC has been engaging private organizations in the maritime industry through specific industry-oriented collaborations in areas ranging from structural analysis of large platforms for the offshore and marine engineering (OME) industry to the study and optimisation of fluid flow behaviour in coastal areas – IHPC has conducted about 30 projects since 2004 with the industry – resulting close to S$1.5million in industry funding. It is therefore timely that a more consolidated approach be taken to elevate the current collaborations to a higher level to enable the maritime companies to take full advantage of the benefits of CSE.
 
Together with the support and endorsement of the Maritime and Port Authority (MPA), IHPC has initiated a research programme – the Maritime Research Programme (MRP) which aims to spearhead the application and  understanding of CSE to the various sectors of the Maritime Cluster through several private-public research partnerships. Under the three year programme, maritime companies will be able to leverage on a new fund – totalling $3.4 million - to help defray their costs on research and development programmes.
 
Under the MRP, IHPC will jointly develop collaborative programmes with companies in the sector as well as being able to offer companies the opportunity to establish a Joint Lab together with IHPC to tap on the Institute’s computational science and engineering capabilities in areas such a fluid dynamics, structural analyses of large complex systems, couple field analysis as well as computing technologies in areas like data-mining and advanced visualisation techniques. This programme has already endorsed one research project and there are several others in the pipeline at various stages of application.
 
Dr Raj Thampuran, Executive Director, IHPC adds, “The institute’s unique position as a leading computational science and engineering institute will increase the R&D activities within the numerous maritime industry companies already located here in Singapore as well as to attract oversea maritime companies to establish R&D centres in Singapore.With the support and endorsement of the Maritime Port Authority, the Maritime Research Programme (MRP) – an example of a Public-Private Partnership (3P) programme – will incentivise companies to invest more in R&D to remain competitive as Singapore strives be a Maritime Research and Development Hub.”