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Deltamarin has been providing ship design, offshore engineering, and construction support services for marine and offshore indus tries worldwide for over 30 years. Mia Elg, the Head of Research and Development at Deltamarin, spoke to Jordan Yallop about the company, industry, and the future of decarbonisation.
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As a passionate ship design and engineering company, Deltamarin focuses on strengthening the businesses of its clients by innovating high-end vessels and supporting their construction with more effi cient and fit-for-purpose solutions. With over 5,000 references from complex marine and offshore projects, it is easy to see how Deltamarin has built up such trust in the sector. Thousands of concepts have been developed by the company’s experts and hundreds of vessels designed by Deltamarin are currently sailing around the world. Within Finland the company has three offices with a total of 250 employees – its headquarters in Turku in addition to offices in Helsinki and Rauma. Deltamarin has also offices in Poland, China and Croatia that together employ around 150 people.
Ms Elg said that Deltamarin has recently been working with sev eral development projects, but also with many commercial projects, which are aiming for zero or very low carbon intensity operation in future years. “It’s exciting to be an engineer today,” she smiled. “Indeed, all those years working for energy saving and emis sion reductions in a small team and finding ways to include the necessary analysis in its commercial products because it is the right thing to do… well, now all those analysis methods are being
Maritime, the next generation As a world-renowned ship designer, Deltamarin has extensive experience in all areas of the industry. One aspect that has seen huge growth in recent years is the transition to greener fuels. Ms Elg said: “We work with all kinds of marine structures, from offshore vessels to traditional cargo and passenger ships. Already from the beginning, we have had international customers and pro jects and have strived to be innovative – it is what we have been doing all along.”
Founded in Finland in 1990, Deltamarin provides ship design, offshore engineering, and construction support services for the marine and offshore industries worldwide.
Mia Elg, the Head of Research and Development said: “We pro vide solutions for the entire lifecycle of the ship; unlike compa nies that may focus more strongly on conceptual design or retrofit services. At Deltamarin, we support the customer from an idea generation all the way to design, supervising, construction, and operational support. And of course, also perform retrofits amongst other services.”
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The company consists of industry experts and forward thinkers and provides fit-for-purpose designs in all ship types and off shore vessels.
She further explained that decarbonisation within the shipping sector is a huge challenge, and one which requires ship operators to have a strategic process in place that combines awareness of current and potential upcoming legislation, market situation and fleet technical performance. A ship designer can help in getting the most out of the current fleet and upgrading it cost-efficiently to the level of sustainability required. Getting this done requires a deep understanding of the customer’s business, after which the designer can focus on finding the right technical solutions and this is where Deltamarin steps up.
As a technology driven company, Deltamarin is always using the latest design innovations to increase productivity and push bound aries. One such technology is the use of a digital twin – a system that is being utilised with increased frequency in the maritime sector, par ticularly in projects related to decarbonisation.
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“We must analyse how the ship is going to handle that kind of transition,” she said. “Typically, in addition to these designs and technology alternatives, there is always some estimation of which fuels will be fuel alternatives for the future.”
put to work in all of the company’s projects. And those technologies that could not make it to projects due to demand for pay-back time in two to three years suddenly become feasible if we expect that the cost of carbon-neutral or low-carbon shipping will be high.”
A good example of low carbon shipping designs are LNGfuelled ships which are being built to accommodate ammonia as a fuel in the future. According to Ms Elg, these types of topics are discussed in almost every project.
Digitalisation and digital twins
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Ms Elg explained that for the past five years, her development team at Deltamarin has focused on solving these challenges. What they have found is that an efficient process does not consist of one single program or tool, but a series of layers. The digital model of the ship that can ultimately evolve into its dig ital twin that consists of the early design phases of the most relevant areas of ship design. Deltamarin has been focusing on three main topics during concept design: energy and environmental performance simulations, the ship’s volume and structural model, and the data layer where wind, wave, and other measured data combine to esti mate its lifetime propulsion power profile. Ms Elg is confident that the future of ship design is in the data-driven design process, where you can form a digital thread between the early demands and targets for the project and the real operating ship. Even though a ship and her systems are dimensioned to certain design conditions such as “extreme” climate and seaway conditions and to a certain maximum speed, the system optimisation should be done for the most common conditions. She concluded: “At the moment we have been developing conceptual designs for zero emission ships and I think that we will be building them very soon. I strongly believe that the whole shipping industry is going to transition to these cleaner fuels soon.” And when that transition finally arrives, expect Deltamarin to be front and centre of the new, ship design era. n “At the moment we have been developing conceptual designs for zero emission ships and I think that we will be building them very soon. I strongly believe that the whole shipping industry is going to transition to these cleaner fuels soon”
