Jan De Nul bridges the gap between engineering and onboard decision support
Conference/JournalMARIN Report 145
Date5 Dec 2025
Aiming to precisely predict the workability of dredging operations, Belgian marine contractor Jan De Nul has developed an accurate tool for office studies and onboard decision support. The tool is the culmination of a long-term project, involving careful modelling, verification, validation and large simulation batches.
The project began with the abstraction and modelling of one of Jan De Nul’s cutter suction dredger (CSD) operations, using MARIN’s time-domain software aNySIM. This was not a straightforward task. The exact same control algorithm used aboard the vessel was embedded in aNySIM by the engineers of Jan De Nul, making the implementation and testing of the controller a collaborative task. To better manage several iterations of the model between MARIN and Jan De Nul, a repository for version control was also used.
The project began with the abstraction and modelling of one of Jan De Nul’s cutter suction dredger (CSD) operations, using MARIN’s time-domain software aNySIM. This was not a straightforward task. The exact same control algorithm used aboard the vessel was embedded in aNySIM by the engineers of Jan De Nul, making the implementation and testing of the controller a collaborative task. To better manage several iterations of the model between MARIN and Jan De Nul, a repository for version control was also used.
Contact
Bruno Rossin
senior project manager
One million simulations
A batch of one million simulations was defined and triggered in incremental steps on the cluster, while processing and network capacity were closely monitored by MARIN’s IT personnel. After a couple of days, the one-million batch was successfully completed. The usage of the tool is very simple. The user must only specify the list of sea states to be analysed and then open the HTML interface, which was developed by MARIN for the specific purposes of this project. The tool automatically interpolates the database and presents the relevant figures.
Jan De Nul’s CSD Willem Van Rubroeck pictured in Bari, Italy