marilight project moves ahead

Malin Marine Consultants have been making great progress on their Marilight project, an innovative initiative funded by the Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition (CMDC). The project aims to provide the marine industry with a clear route to using Large Scale Additive Manufacturing (LSAM) for certified and approved component fabrication, moving from conventional, manual fabrication processes to an automated and flexible rapid manufacturing route. The project has now reached the half-way stage and, having completed the feasibility, early engineering, and equipment calibration stages, the team has now started fabrication of the test pieces.

MMC are joined in the project by a host of industry experts, including Altair Engineering, BAE Systems, Lloyd’s Register, and the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS). This Friday feature we focus on Altair Engineering and the part they play in this exciting scope.

Altair is a global leader in computational science and artificial intelligence (AI) that provides software and cloud solutions in simulation, high-performance computing (HPC), data analytics, and AI. Altair enables organizations across all industries to compete more effectively and drive smarter decisions in an increasingly connected world – all while creating a greener, more sustainable future.

 Altair’s role in the MariLight project is to demonstrate how design optimisation technology can be applied to ship structures to create innovative, light-weight solutions suitable for large scale additive manufacturing.

 Altair are meeting the requirements of this role through the application of Altair’s simulation driven design technology, in particular Altair Inspire. The example shown below is an early-stage concept for an equipment seat, compared to a traditional design, developed using Altair’s topology optimisation technology. The concept demonstrates the greater design flexibility afforded by additive #manufacturing, the potential of which can be fully realised through topology optimisation.

 Altair intend to use the MariLight project to showcase the capabilities of their software such as Altair Inspire in the design of light-weight ship structures.