$13.3M in shipbuilding R&D awards

The National Shipbuilding Research Program’s executive board selected seven new research and development (R&D) projects that aim to spur technology advancements that assist in the reduction of costs associated with shipbuilding and ship repair in the United States. The projects, valued at more than $13.3M including cost share, were selected from proposals in response to a research announcement issued last July. Among Gulf Coast firms participating in at least one of the proposals are Bollinger Shipyards of Lockport, La.; Austal USA of Mobile, Ala.; and VT Halter Marine of Pascagoula, Miss. One of the projects is Mobile-specific: LiftShip constructor software that proposes to automate the process of Finite Element Analysis model generation and analysis in support of large ship structure lifting, and to present results in a concise manner. (Source: Marine Link 01/03/18)