The RAMSSES project has the strategic objective to obtain recognition and an established role for advanced materials in the European maritime industry. To achieve this the project will demonstrate the benefits of new materials in thirteen industry led and market driven demonstrator cases along the entire maritime process chain from components through equipment and ship integration to repair. Those demonstrators will reach a high Technology Readiness Level between TRL 6 and 8 and will either be installed on shore under close to reality conditions or validated on board. The technical performance as well as life cycle cost efficiency and environmental impact will be assessed and validated by specific expert teams following common procedures and testing standards. The test program will be based on risk assessment and a widest possible use of existing test results and supervised by rule making bodies, such ensuring relevance for a commercial approval beyond the project. Test data as well as best practice procedures on design, qualification and production of new material solutions will be made available in a maritime test database and a central knowledge repository, thus allowing fast qualification and approval of similar maritime applications in future. RAMSSES also aims to improve the innovation capabilities of the European maritime sector by elaborating terms of reference of a future use of the test database and the knowledge repository beyond the project. In cooperation with other initiatives, it will contribute to the formation of a maritime materials innovation Platform including continuous technology transfer from and to other industry sectors.

To maintain world leadership in complex, value-added and highly specialised vessels European shipbuilders must develop tailor-made innovative concepts that are efficient to design and build. Project NAVAIS proposed solution is a platform-based modular product family approach supported by the 3DEXPERIENCE integrated business platform. By sharing components and production across a platform of vessels, higher efficiency in vessel design and flexibility in production networks is achieved. NAVAIS uses system engineering approaches to develop the principles, procedures and a re-use component library for modular design and production and will apply these to develop two platform-based product families: passenger/road ferries and multi-use workboats. For each product family a demonstrator will be developed to TRL9 “digital twin”-level, validated and assessed on low impact environmental performance e.g. discharges to air and water, underwater radiated noise and cost-benefit aspects. The demonstrators are a 400 passengers/120 cars E-ferry and a multi-use workboat equipped for aquaculture activities. A major aspect of the platform-based modular approach is the change in value chain management. The current class approval procedure of engineered-to-order designs will be replaced by a procedure where pre-engineered product modules are approved by class, stored in a re-use library and applied in new vessel modular designs. This transfer from an engineered-to-order business model to an assemble-to-order business model will allow shorter process lead-times, constant quality, reduced design and production costs and better integration of the SME supply chain. Exploitation of results is expected at the end of the project duration. NAVAIS partnership contains 16 partners from 5 EU and 1 associated countries and includes technology providers, technology integrators and technology users. The project duration is 4 years and the required funding is € 6,6 MIO.