During March, 2013, as2con`s team has been busy performing several composite patch applications on a Ro-Pax vessel during its normal docking maintenance. In total 23 m2 of composite patch repair were applied on six different units (air-conditioning unit space 1 and 2, two clapper valves, garage floor details and pressure vessel).

The layup of the patches consisted of combinations of glass and carbon reinforcement together with epoxy resin. The exact layup varied depending on the type, size, geometry, and position of the repair. Most repairs were performed to address water tightness problems caused by deterioration of steel due to corrosion.

The patches were applied on parts of the ship structure where it was evaluated that they are more cost effective or significantly easier and quicker to apply than it would be to cut and weld new steel parts.

All composite patch repairs were cured according to manufacturer’s recommendation and subjected to visual inspection of the shipyard engineer in charge.

The SAFEWIN consortium cordially invites you to join us at the final seminar of the SAFEWIN project, organized by AALTO UNIVERSITY, which will take place on Thursday, 13th and Friday 14th of June, 2013 in Espoo, Finland.

The aim of the seminar is to present the most interesting project findings as well as to discuss their implementation and it is free of charge.

It provides an excellent opportunity to influence the ongoing efforts to implement the latest ideas in ice compression descriptions and forecasting, thereby improving and better safeguarding transportation in ice-infested waters.

More info about the SAFEWIN project and the seminar can be found at the official Safewin webpage and the Safewin Seminar Flyer.

We look forward to seeing you in Espoo.

After 40 months of continuous research, numerical analysis, tests, application cases and development of technical and business guidelines for the application of composite materials in repair or reinforcement of marine and civil engineering structures, CO-PATCH project is approaching its end.

The last assembly meeting of the project took place a few weeks ago in Cambridge, UK where the final steps in the project were discussed amongst partners.

The project will be summarized with a public workshop in London on 17th of April 2013. This workshop will provide an excellent opportunity to discuss the final results of the project and enable the participants to gain insights into the latest advances of patch repair technology.

The participants will be able to get an immediate response to key questions, and contribute to further development of the technology by direct interaction with the project partners and other stakeholders.

More info about the CO-PATCH project and the workshop can be found here.

The first six successful months of the MOSAIC project resulted in a second gathering of all partners at the assembly meeting held in Monfalcone, Italy.The meeting took place at mid February and was hosted by Fincantieri and the Monfalcone shipyard.

Project partners presented the first results of tests and analysis performed on composite materials and HSLA steels while several application cases were proposed, discussed and decided upon. Decisions about future tests and analyses, project management plans as well as the promotion of the project in the next six-month period were also the topic of the conversation among partners. The meeting was completed with and interesting tour of the Monfalcone shipyard and a presentation of a new cruise ship that is currently in construction.

More info about the MOSAIC project can be found here.

The discussions on slow steaming are gaining momentum as prices of fuel continue to grow and regulations on CO2 emissions become more strict than ever.

Taking the before mentioned into consideration, it is no surprise that the Ultra Slow Ships - ULYSSES project and its results, were selected as one of the topics to be presented at this year`s Green Ship Technology Conference in Hamburg, Germany.

The conference will be held from 12th to 14th of March, 2013., gathering more than 100 expert speakers including Alan Klanac, the managing director of as2con and one of the representatives of the ULYSSES project.

 The presentation „Understanding how ultra slow speeds can make technical and commercial sense“ will include new data and outputs of the ULYSSES project, discussion on reduced speed issues for existing ships and design considerations for new slow speed ships.

Read more about the ULYSSES project and the GST conference.

Center of Maritime Technologies hosted the first Adam4Eve project meeting that took place in Hamburg, Germany in mid January, 2013. The meeting gathered representatives from 20 leading maritime companies and research facilities from several European countries, including two Croatian ones, as2con and Uljanik shipyard.

The participants made detailed plans for future development of the project.

The first results of the Adam4Eve research are expected in the middle of 2013 and will be available on the official project`s webpage which is currently in development.

More info about the project can be found here.

Starting from December, 2012, as2con became a part of an interesting, ongoing collaboration with STX Finland, a member of the STX Europe Group. as2con`s team members will participate in structural design of a cruise ship, constructed in Turku shipyard.

STX Europe is an international shipbuilding group with a world leading position in the production of cruise ships, ferries, offshore and other specialized vessels, while Turku Shipyard is an experienced builder of cruise ships and other technically demanding specialized ships and offshore units.

Starting from January 1st, 2013 as2con`s team is happy to add a new EU project to its list of successes.

Adam4Eve (Adaptive and smart materials and structures for more efficient vessels) is an EU FP7 project that focuses on the development and assessment of applications of adaptive and smart materials and structures in the shipbuilding industry. This will allow ships to react more flexible to changing operational and environmental conditions and thus to operate more efficiently and environmentally friendly, while maintaining the needed safety level. Moreover, the use of smart and intelligent materials will allow offering new functionalities, making ships more attractive to operators and passengers.

Adam4Eve gathers 20 leading maritime companies and research facilities from several European countries, including two Croatian ones, as2con and Uljanik shipyard. Their partnership on this project will last for 3 years and it will be coordinated by the Center Of Maritime Technologies.

For as2con this the fifth European project from the FP7 initiative. Together with several numerical analysis, as2con, will also be involved in creation of the project`s public website and other promotional materials.

More information about the project can be found here.

as2con`s managing director, Nataša Golik Klanac, had the honor of participating and speaking at this year`s Liderpress conference „Women in business“ as well as to share her views and experience of working in the shipbuilding industry, in an interview published in the „Lider“ magazine.

The conference took place in Zagreb, Croatia at November 6th, 2012. It gathered female owners, directors and managers of successful companies in the region, with the goals of encouraging their mutual cooperation and increasing their participation on high business positions.

Nataša`s speech as well as the published interview  focuses on the topic of male and female equity in business and the role of society to push them both in parallel to excel in business and in life.

Read the interview published in the “Lider” magazine and more info  about the conference.

The Materials Knowledge Transfer Network in collaboration with the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute, hosted a networking event “Composites in Ships”, held in November, 2012. in Southampton. The purpose of this event was to improve the cooperation of relevant companies who work together to encourage the development of composite products for ships.

As composite technology represents a relevant part of as2con`s research and development strategy, our managing director, Alan Klanac, participated in this event and brought new discoveries and knowledge on composites our way.

More info on the event can be found here.

as2con supports the Erasmus Mundus Master Course for Advanced Ship Design – EMSHIP.

The EMSHIP scholarships, in six European Universities, are intended for engineers/Naval Architects from EU and non EU countries who wish to improve their knowledge in ship design.

For more info visit www.emship.eu

The sixth issue of as2con Newsletter, published in November 2012, is now available here.

This spring, Croatian shipbuilders have joined a short list of producers of the new exhaust gas cleaning „scrubber“ technology.  The cooperation between as2con-alveus ltd and Viktor Lenac shipyard, together with scrubber suppliers, resulted in the installation of a first Croatian „scrubber“ onboard an AFRAMax tanker owned by a Croatian ship operator Tankerska Plovidba. as2con engineered the installation in collaboration with Viktor Lenac who was in charge of conducting the installation.

Saacke-LMB`s scrubber represents an exhaust gas cleaning device that uses untreated seawater as the scrubbing agent to remove SO gasses. It is also equipped with a special VentSep device that removes particulate matter, resulting in up to 97 percent removal of the SOx and soot from the exhaust gas.

Choosing the seawater scrubbing technology instead of switching to low Sulphur fuel significantly reduces operating costs, avoids fuel storage and availability issues, and most importantly reduces the operational impact of ships on the environment.

We are proud to announce that as2con became a member of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce business consultants group.

Our aim is to use this network to further strengthen our connection with industry and SMEs by providing consultancy services for EU project preparation and management.

In collaboration with De-Naval ltd., a partner design office from Rijeka, Croatia, as2con conducted FEM strength kasyna assessment of the foundations and supports of an LNG tank onboard an LNG -powered tug vessel.  The assessment considered loads emerging from the weight of the tank and acceleration due to the vessel's motions. The mentioned tug vessel was designed by a Norwegian partner company and presents a novel feature in the present maritime market.

as2con's managing director, Alan Klanac, participated in the 18th International Ship and Offshore Structures Congress that was held in Rostock, Germany in September, 2012. as the Croatian representative in the Design Principles and Criteria committee. This congress represents a forum for the exchange of information by experts undertaking and applying marine structural research. We were proud to be a part of such an important event. 

In a new project, that begun this spring, as2con conducted FEM analysis of the hull structure of an open top river and sea-going barge. The analysis focused on the hull girder strength due to the vertical bending and torsional moments. The project was conducted in collaboration with Navis Concept, a naval architecture consultancy from Rijeka, Croatia.

We are proud to announce that as2con`s team member Tanja Pavlović successfully defended her master thesis at the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Economics, and received the title of M.Sc. Econ. in the field of marketing.

Her thesis included a scientific review and a survey on the dissemination and promotion of knowledge and results of the EU FP7 research and development project, with the special emphasis on the Ultra Slow Ships project, ULYSSES.

The research explored different dissemination and knowledge transfer tools and their effectiveness.

The collaboration between as2con and the British Cammell Laird Shiprepairers & Shipbuilders Ltd. resulted in a new completed project.

Using finite element analysis, as2con conducted the assessment of the response of a ship structure in case of emergency towing.

The analysis was conducted for a British navy ship and represents an interesting project for as2con that will hopefully result in many new successful collaborations.

as2cons' managing directors, Alan Klanac and Nataša Golik Klanac, participated in the SORTA 2012 symposium, which was held from 27th to 29th of September in Zagreb, Croatia.

SORTA represents the biggest Croatian shipbuilding symposium and this year celebrates the 20th year of its existence.

Nataša and Alan presented their professional paper prepared together with Nikolina Rebić, „Implications of the ‘true service yard’ business model for a shipbuilding system“ which can be viewed here.

A new EU FP7 project Mosaic, which started in September 2012, explores the possible usage of HSLA steel and composite materials in ship structures.

We are proud to say that the first project meeting, held in Genoa, at the 17th and 18th of September, laid solid foundations for the successful future of the Mosaic project.

The kick-off meeting was organized by the project coordinator, CETENA, and it gathered representatives from the 11 partner companies, including as2con`s team members Alan Klanac and Tanja Pavlović.  

The participants made detailed plans for each future phase of the project and discussed the potential application cases and materials to be used.

The first results of the Mosaic research are expected at the end of 2012 and will be available on the official project`s webpage which is currently in development.

The first Ulysses summer school brought new discoveries and accumulated knowledge in energy efficient shipping through ultra-slow steaming presented trough many interesting lectures conducted by leading experts in the field and partners on the Ulysses project, including as2con`s managing director Alan Klanac.

This years` Summer School was hosted by the Technical University of Denmark in Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark and held from 20^th to the 23^rd of August 2012. The course syllabus consisted of lectures on both reduced speed issues for existing ships and design considerations for new slow speed ships.

We are proud to say that this year`s summer school was very successful and well visited and we hope next year will bring even more participants and just as many interesting lectures.

More info about the Ulysses project as well and some of the given presentations can be found here.

Experts in the field of winter navigation and partners in the Safewin project participated in the 7^th Safewin assembly meeting held at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland on 28^th and 29^th of August, 2012. The participants shared their opinions and expertise and presented several new findings such as different measurements conducted in winter 2011-2012 (coastal radars, buoys, satellite data, ice thickness, meteorological data, online vibration, compression reports, etc.), traffic ability index for winter navigation in the Baltic Sea, online ship borne ice resistance measurements onboard and other.

Partners also discussed the future developments in the project and decided on organizing a workshop concerning the operative forecasting tool validation and IBNet reporting system in November 2012, hosted by FMI.

The following SAFEWIN meeting will be held in May 2013 in Rijeka, Croatia.

More news and information about the SAFEWIN project and the assembly meeting can be found on the project`s official website.

We are happy to make an announcement of an Ultra Slow Ships semi­nar to be held on November 30th, 2012 in Paris (Evergreen Hôtel).

The seminar will bring state-of-the-art results of the ULYSSES project in a form of lectures and interactive discussions and is free of charge. Some of the presenters are: Bureau Veritas, Wärtsilä, as2con, Chalmers University of Technol­ogy, CRAIN, Danish Maritime Authority, Technical University of Denmark, EURONAV, Germanischer Lloyd, SSPA Sweden, TNO, Newcastle University and TORM.

We would like to invite you to join the group of respect­able attendees and share with us your expertise, ideas and opinions. 

Please register for the seminar by October 1st, 2012 at info@ultraslowships. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with an e-mail containing the fol­lowing: your name, company or institution, profession, job description, e-mail address and telephone number.

More info about the agenda and other details of the seminar will be available soon.

Informative day for Transport in EU projects, organized by the Croatian Institute of Technology in collaboration with the Croatian Chamber of Economy will take place in Zagreb on Friday, 7th of September, 2012.

This important and educative event will present several important topics in the field of transport as well as future EU programs concerning transport.

On the behalf of as2con, one of the successful Croatian representatives in the EU transport projects, our managing director Alan Klanac will hold a lecture and share our experience and knowledge in the field.

The event is, in the first place, intended for scientist, research institutions and companies interested in EU transport projects, but is also open for all other visitors and interested parties with no charge.

For more info on the Informative day for Transport in EU project, visit http://www.hit.hr/web/.

The given presentations can be found here.

We are proud to announce that as2con will share its knowledge and expertise in the field of composite materials in a new EU FP7 project MOSAIC (Materials on-board: steel advancements and integrated composites), starting from September, 2012. The project aims to investigate two novel ideas concerning ship structures. First, the introduction of High Strength Low Alloyed Steels (HSLA) in specific structural details and second the replacement of specific structural parts of the ship with composite materials.

HSLA steels reduce the risk of cracks developing in stress concentration areas while composite materials can replace parts of the steel structure thereby reducing weight and corrosion effects.

The final outcome of the project will be the development of relevant guidelines for the design and application of these two new concepts in shipbuilding.

The project coordinator is The Italian Ship Research Centre – CETENA while the project consortium consists of 11 members from 6 European countries.

For as2con this the fourth European project from the FP7 initiative. Together with several numerical analysis and the development of composite components, as2con, will conduct a life-cycle cost analysis, cost-benefit and market analysis as well as create a business plan and a marketing strategy for promoting the project`s final products.

More information about the project can be found here.

as2con`s expertise has once again been demonstrated trough two new projects completed in the course of July and August, 2012.

In collaboration with Viktor Lenac shipyard, as2con pokies online has conducted a serious of analysis for m/v Sampson, a special heavy lifting pipe laying ship (1600 t) which is currently undergoing a refit process. as2con performed a hull global strength analysis including analysis of collapse, pipe rack analysis as well as the analysis of other structural details using the FE method.

In July, 2012 a new collaboration with 6Sigma Naval Architects also resulted in several analysis performed by as2con. Structural analyses for hull steel replacement, FEM check on modified steel structure with several critical load cases as well as 3 case load scenarios were performed on a platform in South Africa.

We are proud to announce that as2con`s team member Tomislav Tomac successfully defended his master thesis at the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Engineering, and received the title of M.Sc. Mech. Eng.

His thesis included an interesting automobile aluminum bumper crash test using explicit nonlinear finite element analysis. The analyzed bumper was designed for Docking’s XD electric city car.

We are proud to announce that as2con has prepared the first issue of the Ulysses newsletter and it is ready for you to enjoy it. Join us in the exploration of slow steaming and read all the interesting information about the project in general as well as planned future activities.

The newsletter can be found here.

For more information about the Ulysses project visit www.ultraslowships.com

AIMEN research institute and Francisco Cardama shipyard hosted the 6th CO-PATCH assembly meeting held in Vigo, Spain at July 5th and 6th, 2012.

as2con´s managing director Alan Klanac joined all the partners of the project in presenting recent results and planning future actions.

Results presented included large scale composite patching tests on the catamaran, numerical investigations into patch behavior as well as results of the parametric study on optimal patch design presented by as2con.

The next project meeting will be held in Trondheim in November 2012. By that time it is expected that the project will result in patch application guidelines and completion of other tasks such as testing and etc.

Efforts made and knowledge gained trough CO-PATCH project will be exploited in commercial ventures, but also further enhanced through the new EU project MOSAIC, starting in September 2012, which gathers a part of the CO-PATCH consortium partners including as2con.

The cooperation between as2con and Viktor Lenac shipyard has once again resulted in a new successful project. Starting from May, 2012 as2con has conducted a serious of analysis for a special heavy lifting pipe laying ship (1600 t) which is currently undergoing a refit process. as2con performed hull global strength analysis including analysis of collapse, pipe rack analysis as well as analysis of other structural details.

Since the beginning of 2012, as2con has been actively involved in a series of projects with a Croatian shipyard Viktor Lenac. These include a number of tasks related to engineering analysis and design, as well as the composite repairs using our COMPA technology.

We hope that this successful cooperation will continue in the future and bring many new, interesting projects such as this one.

Riteh Racing Team, from the Technical University of Rijeka, is proud to present their new race car RRC2-evo, constructed with the sponsorship and support of as2con, which will be used in this year's FSAE Competition in England and Italy.

FSAE is the world's most famous student competition in constructing race cars that are later used in an actual race between the competing teams.

Riteh Racing Team is the Croatian most rewarded team in student race car construction with rewards received in competitions in England, Germany and Hungary.

The official rollout will be held in the club Boa (Ante Starčevića 8, Rijeka) on July 6th at 9 pm, where the Racing Team will be free to answer all the questions from the interested participants.

as2con whishes good luck and all the best to the Racing team in the upcoming  competitions!!

We are happy to announce that the registration for Ulysses Summer School is now officially open.

Join us in sharing new discoveries and accumulated knowledge in Energy Efficient Shipping Through Ultra-Slow Steaming by participating in many interesting lectures conducted by leading experts in the field and partners on the Ulysses project.

This year's Summer School is hosted by the Technical University of Denmark in Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark and will be held from 20^th to the 23^rd of August 2012.

The target audience includes: PhD students, MSc students towards the end of their studies, and engineers working in the maritime and maritime consulting industry.  The course syllabus includes lectures on both reduced speed issues for existing ships and design considerations for new slow speed ships.

To register for the Summer School please contact Kari Haugland at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it no later than July 30^th, 2012.

All the additional information about the Summer School such as the registration fee, list of lecturers, accommodation and the official program can be found here. 

For all the general info on the ULYSSES project go to www.ultraslowships.com

Enjoy the Summer School experience!

The fifth issue of as2con Newsletter, published in June 2012, is now available here.

We are happy to announce that a Greek company Avin International S. A. has decided to join the Stakeholder Forum of the EU FP7 project on real pokies online Composite Patch Repair for Marine and Civil Engineering Infrastructure Applications – CO-PATCH.

Avin International S.A. is a major tanker operator, active in the shipment of crude oil and petroleum products. The company has also been very active in undertaking various shipbuilding programs, in Split, Japan, Ukraine, S.Korea and recently China.

In the beginning of 2012, we have established a cooperation with Pacific Light Shipping company from UAE that will represent our services of ship care, COMPA technology, ship design and maritime software in their respective markets. 

PLS company is specialised in: risk management, maritime training, shipboard surveys and inspections, vessel condition assessment, ship manuals and port and harbor plans and risk management.

Since the beginning of 2012, as2con has been actively involved in a series of projects with a Croatian shipyard Viktor Lenac. These include a number of tasks related to engineering analysis and design, as well as the composite repairs using our COMPA technology.

Viktor Lenac and as2con have agreed to strengthen their collaboration for the future in order to bring to realization a number of development projects.

Further details on these projects will be disclosed in the upcoming months. 

Viktor Lenac shipyard is the biggest Croatian repair and conversion yard with 100 years of tradition, and with a very respectable list of challenging projects and clients behind them.

Thus this collaboration makes us very happy and excited considering current and coming projects.

CAFE team members Darko Frank, Svemir Bralić, Alan Klanac and Igor Juričić, from Intergraph, brought new discoveries of their research in a paper called “CAFEmesher: An Advanced Complex FE Mesh Generation Algorithm Utilized in SmartMarine® 3D Environment”.

The before mentioned paper will be presented at the International Marine Design Conference in June 2012. in Glasgow, UK.

This paper outlines the importance of providing a designer with accurate strength assessments in an early stage of the design process and also proposes the solution for bridging the gap between CAD and FEM software tools to overcome the repeated modeling for FEM purposes.

The solution integrates SmartMarine 3D with CAFE system and enables SmartMarine3D to exploit CAFE’s mesh generation capabilities.

The PDF version of the abstract can be downloaded here.

as2con has been contracted by a German consultancy 8.2 to develop FEMmodels of ships for the collision analysis with offshore wind turbine. A standard AFRAMax tanker structure has been designed using the CAFE software.

FEM model was prepared also in CAFE, ready for export to LS-Dyna. Using thespecial "RE-MESHER" tool developed by as2con, certain areas of interest of themodel were fine-remeshed in order to allow for accurate collision simulations.

The 6^th SAFEWIN assembly meeting held in Turku, Finland on the 17^th and the 18^thof April 2012 has once again gathered experts in the field of winter navigation. The participants have presented many of their new findings such as meteorological measurements in Gulf of Riga and in Gulf of Finland, ice model validation in local scale,ice tracker experiments, the compressive pressure measurements and different factors affecting the modelling results and compression reporting.

Project partners have discussed the status of the project and decided on new events to attend. Before mentioned findings will be presented on the International Ice Chart Workshop and Makarov conference in the close future.

The following SAFEWIN meeting will be held in August in Espoo, Finland.

More news and information about the SAFEWIN project can be found on the projects` official website.

As2con-alveus ltd. has performed the longitudinal strength analysis of the 110 m river tanker Neptunus using the finite element method (FEM). The ship has been modelled using  CAFE - innovative ship design software. The task has been performed for Bomex shipyard.

As2con-alveus ltd. has been working on the classification documentation for the 45 m tug/supply vessel – Alsadiq. The documentation included Stability Booklet, General Arrangement, Fire and Safety Plan, Main Frame Drawings, Shell Expansion Drawings, Lines Plan Drawings, Tank Capacity Plan and Transverse Bulkhead Drawings. The task has been performed for the Pacific Light Shipping Ltd.

As2con's MD, Alan Klanac, Martial Claudepierre (project manager BV), and Bjorn Allestrom (SSPA Vice president) presented The Ultra Slow Shipping concept of the EU project ULYSSES on March 27th at Green Ship Technology Conference in Copenhagen. The presentation can be downloaded here. 

Official publication of the project ULYSSES can be found in the publications section of the project`s offical web site.

Hereby we would like to thank Metis ltd. from Rijeka for granting us waste steel material for testing.

We would also like to thank Pičuljan Marine ltd. for the assistance in the production of the first examples of composite materials used within composite patching and overlay technology for repair and reinforcement of damaged structures.

We are happy to inform all ship equipment producers of a possibility to import data of different equipment and visualise the equipment in ship-design software CAFE (www.bvbcafe.com). 

real online pokies geneva; font-size: 10pt; color: #000000;">We have learnt from our customers that they find CAFE’s possibility to visualise a real piece of equipment (with real data) extremely useful. Such an option helps customers to promptly get insights into the suitability of equipment dimensions with the particular ship space, as well as to simply and immediately calculate ship total mass. We believe that by enabling this, we provide a prime service to CAFE users, while giving the producers a competitive advantage.
Find more about how to import your equipment’s data here.

Our team members Alan Klanac and Darko Frank participated in the 5th SAFEWIN assembly meeting held in Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) in St. Petersburg, Russia on 26th and 27th October 2011. Project partners presented the progress of their research, exchanged data and made plans for further collaboration. as2con presented the results of sea-ice finite element model validation.

as2con director and the leader of our business development team was placed among top 8 woman in Europe who are innovators, entrepreneurs and scientists. The competition was organized in September 2011 by Innovation Union – an initiative of the European Commission to promote innovations. The competition criteria included: innovativeness of our solutions, marketability, social and economic impact of our solutions as well as Nataša’s scientific and entrepreneurial involvement. The contest gathered about 100 women from entire Europe.

The fourth issue of as2con Newsletter, published in November 2011, is now available here.