Results of the 2021 EDF (European Defence Fund) have been just released. EDF will support high-end defence capability projects inside EU. 61 collaborative defence research and development projects?with a total EU support of almost?€1.2 billion?were selected for funding. Among them, the project dTHORS was selected, with DMEC as active part of the consortium.
 dTHORwill develop the next generation of a predictive Ship Structural Health Monitoring system.

The project “Digital Ship Structural Health Monitoring” (dTHOR) will develop a system based on innovative utilization of large amounts of load and response measurements from robust and advanced sensors, a digital framework complying with recognised open standards for data exchange, and hybrid analysis and modelling which combines physics-based and data-driven models. dTHOR will consolidate end-users operational requirements based on improved damage and structural integrity assessment, reduced hydro-acoustic signatures, and more accurate operation of the systems.
Within this framework, models can be used not only to assess the structural integrity and to predict the residual strength, but also to interpret data from sensors. To this aim, a sensor network deployed on the structure allows the digital-twin of the ship structure to be constantly updated to mimic the real structure behaviour, thus coupling real-sensors with a multitude of virtual sensors and enabling the distributed health condition monitoring.

The consortium is formed by 35 members from several EU country. Politecnico di Milano takes part in the project with a research team from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The duration of the project is 36 months.

The research team, leaded by Prof. Marco Giglio, Prof. Claudio Sbarufatti, Prof. Francesco Cadini and Prof. Andrea Manes also involving PhD students, MSc students and researchers, will leverage on its experience in the development of Digital-Twins and Artificial Intelligence algorithms for the design and development of intelligent Health and Usage Monitoring Systems and high fidelity structure and material models.