Each year, the Royal Netherlands Navy (RNLN) presents its Van Hengel-Spengler Award to research that improves the operational deployment of naval units. This year’s nominees focused on amphibious operations, turbocharger configurations to improve the efficiency of diesel engines and the submerged exhaust system.

The winner will be announced at the Maritime Awards Gala, which takes place on 4 November in Rijswijk, The Netherlands. The Maritime Awards Gala Foundation has now released the official nominee videos. Watch them below. The three nominees for the Maritime RNLN Van Hengel-Spengler Award 2019 are:

  • Kelly Villena with “Optimising the Ship to Shore Transport Problem During Amphibious Operations”: The core of an amphibious operation is the safe and rapid transport of personnel and equipment from the sea to land or vice versa. These operations are currently planned manually, which is a time-consuming and complex process. In this research, a new method has been developed to determine an optimal planning for the ship to shore transport problem. This method uses a mathematical model to find the optimal solution in a considerably shorter time than was previously possible.
  • Joris Rusman with “Turbocharger Configurations for Propulsion Engines on Board Naval Vessels”: The time a naval vessel can be sent out for a mission is limited by its dependence on supplies. In addition, the Royal Netherlands Navy has a social responsibility to minimise its impact on the environment, in particular global warming. That is why the RNLN wants to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. The operational profile of a navy frigate requires that the ship sails on its diesel engines for ninety per cent of the time, often in part load. This study investigates the effect of advanced turbocharger configurations on the efficiency and acceleration performance of diesel engines. The study has shown that by using these configurations, the efficiency and acceleration performance of diesel engines can be improved. This can make a significant contribution to the RNLN’s goal of reducing its logistic dependence and environmental impact.
  • Maarten Klapwijk with “Modeling of the Exhaust Plume of a Submerged Exhaust System”: Rising exhaust fumes from an underwater outlet of diesel-electric submarines cause a disturbance on the water surface. This surface disturbance can lead to operational risks, such as reduced visibility through the periscope, water falling in through the snorkelling mast, and detection by hostile vessels. It has been investigated whether numerical fluid dynamics (CFD) can be used in the design phase to calculate this. For the simulations, the CFD package ReFRESCO was applied to the original configuration of the Walrus class. The results were compared with experiments done during construction. An error analysis showed that the surface disturbance can be predicted with a numerical error margin of around fifteen per cent. From this comparison, it was concluded that CFD is well able to predict the pulsating behaviour and the order of magnitude of the disturbances.