Digital Transformation for Navy Ship Structures

Benjamin Grisso, Ph.D.

Research & Development Lead for Structural Health Monitoring and Digital Twin, Structural Reliability Branch, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division

Abstract:

U.S. Navy ships spend ten times more time for maintenance in shipyards than their commercial equivalents. While some of this disparity is a direct result of required naval ship complexity and operational differences, maintenance durations and costs have still been increasing at unsustainable rates. A recent study has revealed a major contributor to operational days lost due to do maintenance is the lack of platform condition assessment. Furthermore, hull structure is often a major source of growth maintenance work. Addressing these noted deficiencies requires digital transformation of ship structures across multiple fronts. This presentation will briefly cover high-level recommendations for enhancing ship maintenance and discuss how these recommendations apply to structures. An overview of current ship structure digital transformation efforts will follow. Finally, due to the scope and complexity of structural digital transformation, high level technical gaps and potential opportunities for collaboration are detailed.       

Biography:

Dr. Benjamin Grisso is a US Navy engineer focused on developing and transitioning novel technology to the fleet. Currently, he serves as the Research & Development Lead for Structural Health Monitoring and Digital Twin within the Structural Reliability Branch at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division. Research areas of interest include sensor technology development, large-scale distributed sensing, data analytics, digital twin, edge computing, and digital signal processing. He is an active member in Navy, DoD, NATO and other digital twin and digital engineering working groups and communities of interest.