(NEWS) New EU Research Grants for WMU - CyClaDes and MARE-WINT

November

2012

New EU Research Grants for WMU - CyClaDes and MARE-WINT

WMU has successfully participated in a number of research calls within the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme. Under the call for "Human element factors in shipping safety", funding has been approved for the three-year project, CyClaDes, and within the CURIE programme, the proposal for the four-year project MARE-WINT has passed the evaluation process and will be funded by the EU. Both started on 1 October 2012, and will be carried out by the MaRiSa (Maritime Risk and Safety) research group, led by WMU Associate Professor, Dr Jens-Uwe Schröder-Hinrichs.

WMU is a major partner and work-package leader in CyClaDes- "Crew-centred Design and operations of ships and ship systems". Under the leadership of the German classification society Germanischer Lloyd, the consortium brings together 14 partners from industry (manufacturers and classification societies), and research institutions and universities from nine countries (Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Portugal and Greece). The total project value is €4.2 million; this includes €2.9 million of EU funding, of which WMU will receive €307,000.

The overall aim of the project is to promote the increased impact of the human element in shipping across the design and operational lifecycle. The multi-disciplinary team will focus on the key steps in the lifecycle and the role of the stakeholders involved. The project will investigate where the barriers to human element integration occur; and how to best locate, produce, disseminate, and apply human element knowledge within the overall context of shipping.

WMU is one of the main research partner institutions in the project and is leader of two work packages. The first will define qualification concepts that raise the awareness for user-centered design in ships, and develop methods for user-centered design and their evaluation. The second work package will develop a technology implementation plan for the dissemination and exploitation of the project output, to ensure full commercial utilization of the technology developed, and will use end-user groups to facilitate the dissemination of the research.

The second new project, MARE-WINT ("New MAterials and REliability in offshore WINd Turbines technology") is an Initial Training Network project under the Marie Curie Actions. The MARE-WINT network is led by the Institute of Fluid-Flow Machinery of the Polish Academy of Sciences and consists of twelve European private and public universities, training, education and research institutions from nine countries (Poland, Denmark, United Kingdom, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Italy and the Netherlands) and further 14 associated partners (large as well as small and medium-sized enterprises) active across the field of off-shore developments. The overall value of this project is €3.9 million and is completely EU-funded; WMU will receive €275,000.

MARE-WINT will contribute to increasing energy output and making wind energy fully competitive by reducing operation and maintenance costs. This will be realized by providing training in the context of doctoral programs for 14 researchers in the multi-disciplinary area of future generations of Offshore Wind Turbines (OWT) engineering focusing on those issues that have a major impact on such installations. WMU’s focus will be an assessment of the risk of collisions between passing ships and offshore wind farm installations.

For more information about the projects, please contact Dr Jens-Uwe Schröder (jus@wmu.se, +46 – (0)40 – 356306) or Dr Michael Baldauf (mbf@wmu.se, +46 – (0)40 – 356390)

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