The theme of industrial competitiveness has been pursued in the area of Marine Innovative Design and Manufacturing Processes. This is supported through a series of EU research programmes and using techniques such as Computational Fluid Dynamics, Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks together with Reliability Analysis to enhance all stages of the manufacturing and production process.
Research in Marine and Offshore Fluid Dynamics, Structures and Materials is concerned with fluid structure interaction and its implications for the safety and performance of offshore structures, ships and small crafts. Extensive work has been carried out on the materials aspects of the subject together with the MSE Design Manufacture and Materials group.
Marine Hydrodynamics and Propulsion is concerned with the hydrodynamic efficiency of ships in a seaway focussing on the reduction of hydrodynamic drag, enhanced seakeeping codes, and hydrodynamic analyses on novel propulsion devices. Moreover, extensive work has been done in the aerodynamic and hydrodynamic optimisation of high performance sailing yachts, such as America's Cup yachts.