For all three nominees for the Maritime Royal Netherlands Navy (RNLN) Van Hengel-Spengler Award, digitalisation was an important part of their innovative research.
Every year, the RNLN awards the Maritime RNLN Van Hengel-Spengler Award to an operational innovation, designed by students up to 35 years of age.
The winning research has to be able to lead to new insights, concepts or innovations, that contribute to improving the operational deployment of naval units. The award is named after two Dutch naval officers, Theo A. van Hengel and R. P.C. Spengler, who built the first rotor machine in 1915. This machine formed the basis for the German Enigma machine and later the first computer developed by Alan Turing.
The nominees for 2018 are Kirsten Schmidt, Marijn Nap-Boone and Niek van de Nieuwenhuijzen. Their research focused on:
Using Augmented Reality on the Bridge
During an internship at the Netherlands Organisation for applied scientific research TNO, Kirsten Schmidt investigated how Augmented Reality (AR) could aid navy personnel with safe navigation on the bridge. Using qualitative research and operational user evaluations, she developed an Augmented Reality viewer concept with a prototype of an AR device, which increases situation awareness and thus supports navy personnel in safe navigation.
Receiving Meteorological Data on Board
During an internship at the Netherlands Defence department for knowledge, innovation, experiments and simulation (KIXS), Marijn Nap-Boone investigated the possibility of compressing meteorological data down to a size suitable for satellite communication. She developed a prototype which, using various mathematical techniques, compresses the volume of a dataset to a file smaller than 10 MB. This enables the use of e-mail services to make numerical weather predictions available on board of ships and submarines at sea.
Analysing Torsional Vibration with Simulations
At the Royal Netherlands Defence Academy, Sub-lieutenant Niek van den Nieuwenhuijzen investigated the possibility of simulating the torsional vibration behaviour of a powertrain of a ship through time domain simulations. Using various mathematical methods, he developed a finite element program which can simulate the torsional vibration behaviour. This simulation provides the means for a better analysis of the torsional vibration behaviour of a ship’s powertrain.
Maritime Awards Gala
The winner of the Maritime RNLN Van Hengel-Spengler Award 2018 will be announced at the Maritime Awards Gala on 12 November in Zaandam, the Netherlands. Watch the official nominee videos below.
Picture: Kirsten Schmidt developed a prototype of an AR device.
