Finnish company Wartsila, which builds maritime equipment, is specifically mentioned in an article about Singapore’s newly completed giant pool for simulating ocean conditions.
The pool is Singapore’s first artificial ocean basin, a $107 million facility which can help further research in marine and offshore engineering, sea transport, the prediction of storm surges and coastal protection.
Officially opened on Tuesday (July 26) at the Tcoms building in the National University of Singapore (NUS), it puts Tcoms – and Singapore – in the league of other advanced maritime research agencies with their own ocean basins in Denmark, Norway, Australia and Britain.
Tcoms is short for the Technology Centre for Offshore and Marine Singapore, a national research and development centre that pairs NUS with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research.
In the article in Straits Times, Director of Wartsila’s ecosystem development Chris Chung said: “We can use different types of scenarios like big waves, strong currents, then subject this model to that type of environment, which you don’t necessarily do in the real world. This allows us to do it both safely and also in an economical sort of way.”
He added that the ocean basin complements the digital simulators that industry players have been using.
“Before you get to a very accurate digital model, it’s physical testing and understanding real world physics that is still very important. The basin’s state-of-the art sensors help us understand (data) that you can bring into the computer model.”
Tcoms’ ocean basin has already attracted many industry players. Apart from Wartsila, the article also mentions Keppel which wants to use the basin to test greener vessels, which the industry is increasingly shifting towards.
