Development and Validation of a Customizable DP System for a Full Bridge Real Time Simulator

This paper presents the development and validation of a customizable Dynamic Positioning (DP) System for a real time full bridge simulator. The Maritime Waterway Simulator (SMH) was developed based on the code of the Numerical Offshore Tank (TPN) simulator. It is able to perform study of maneuvers feasibility and crew training. Many simulated operations such as oil offloading, pipe-laying, support to platforms or station keeping, require a DP system. In order to meet the demand for such a system, a complete system was developed with an important requirement in mind: The DP system of a full bridge simulator must be easily customizable for different types of vessels. In order to validate the developed DP system, a commercial DP system is used for comparison. DP operations with the vessel is conducted with both systems: the in house developed DP and the commercial one. The results obtained with the developed DP system are compared with the one obtained with the commercial system. This comparison demonstrates that the in-house DP system can indeed be used for simulating different types of DP vessels.