A distributed simulation framework for Naval Operations’ assessment

Sergio Simone (Italian Navy), Davide Tozzi (CETENA S.p.A.)

Ship’s performances and capabilities assessment in complex scenarios is often unlikely to be accomplished, especially in the early design phase.

The use of a federated simulation system through High Level Architecture (HLA) allows to reproduce a complex scenario in a synthetic environment, making several simulators and partners to work together just exchanging inputs and outputs, but keeping safe intellectual properties.

This paper gives an overview of the NOSE (Naval Operations Simulation Environment), a project led by Italian Navy and developed by CETENA concerning the simulation of two specific naval operations. Loads transfer between two ships moving side by side and LCU (Landing Craft Utility) approaching manoeuvre to an LPD (Landing Platform Dock) have been considered in this project for which an HLA simulation framework has been design and developed in order to reproduce and study the above mentioned scenarios.

The simulation architecture has been also developed with the intention of exercising the draft Virtual Ships (VS) Standardisation Agreement (STANAG) and the corresponding Allied Naval Engineering Publication (ANEP). A verification and validation process through the use of tank tests data will be performed in order to obtain a reliable simulator to be used both for design and training purposes.