WET News

6 WET NEWS APRIL 2018 | wwtonline.co.uk NEWS+ Yorkshire Water using VR gaming technology to design turistic sites • Company eyes huge savings in design costs over next two years E ngineers at Yorkshire Water are turning to virtual reality technology developed by the University of Sheffield to help design and visualise new treat- ment works that the company hopes will save £1M in design costs by 2020. The university's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) has developed virtual reality headsets that allow York- shire Water engineers to bring to life plans for new treatment works and other equipment. The technology is similar to that used by immersive game designers but with a manufacturing focus. The cutting-edge technology is seen as a viable alternative to tra- ditional modelling packages such as CAD because it allows for pow- erful interaction with conceptual design models. So far, it has saved Yorkshire Water £180,000 by not having to build real-life prototypes and instead enter a virtual reality world that engineers can walk around and check design plans. Nevil Muncaster, director of asset management at Yorkshire Water, said: "Virtual reality is a brilliant way of communicating with all our stakeholders, provid- ing an instantly recognisable vis- ual experience that enables them to not only understand the design but also to contribute to making it more efficient and effective. It takes a technical drawing and converts it into a powerful, immersive experience." The AMRC's mission is to help companies based in the UK intro- duce innovative technologies and the virtual reality technology has already helped Boeing and Mercedes-Benz. For Yorkshire Water, the tech- nology will allow the firm to man- ufacture more equipment off-site that has been rigorously tested in a virtual environment, helping to improve construction accuracy and reducing on-site health and safety risks. Mike Lewis, technical lead at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, said: "At the end of this project, Yorkshire Water will have the equipment and the skills to be able to do this them- selves. From there, we could work with them on more advanced CONTRACT WINS South West Water has appointed RPS to carry out leakage detection works to enhance delivery perfor- mance and to outperform the annual leakage targets. The contract will begin in April 2018, for up to four years. Severn Trent has awarded Bluewater Bio a second phosphorus contract. Its multi-media filtration technology, FilterClear, will be used at Brockhampton STW. Glan Agua Farrans JV (GAFJV) has been awarded Lots 2 and 3 of the HS2 Process and Network Modifications Frameworks for Affinity Water, with a total estimated value of £29 million. HS2 is the pro- posed new high-speed rail link from London to Birmingham and beyond, which will bisect Affinity Water's supply area. systems, pulling in real-time data from sites that improve produc- tivity and maintenance regimes. We could also develop aug- mented reality training systems, including health and safety, that take the same assets and use them to upskill the Yorkshire Water workforce of the future." A detailed virtual reality model has already been made of York- shire Water's Irton water treat- ment works in Scarborough, which is in the process of having a £17.5M upgrade. The virtual design has enabled engineers to check that everything fits where it is supposed to fit before it goes on site to ensure that operators and maintenance engineers have a site that is simple to run. For sustainable drainage, after the government's overhaul of the National Planning Policy Framework said that Suds should be included in all future major development projects in England unless there is "clear evidence" that it would be unsuitable. For United Utilities and Anglian Water, whose pension scheme changes saw them faced with industrial action from workers. UU said it was "disappointed" that around a third of its employees called strikes over a cut to their staff pension scheme; Anglian rejected Unite's claim it was "seeking to provoke strike action" by refusing to enter talks at Acas over the closure of its final salary pension scheme. Southern Water uses racing car technology for network modelling • Ricardo's IGNITE software normally measures flows of liquid, air and hot exhaust gases in racing cars S outhern Water has teamed up with engineering experts at consultancy Ricardo to apply the computer simulation techniques Ricardo's team uses to optimise high-performance cars to improve the resilience of the water distribution network. Engineers from both compa- nies have been cooperating to use Ricardo's IGNITE computer-aided engineering so¡ware, which nor- mally measures flows of liquid, air and hot exhaust gases in Muncaster added: "What we now have is an immersive experi- ence that enables us to check all the interfaces; to check that eve- rything fits where it is supposed to fit before it goes on site; to ensure that safety and efficiency are fully integrated into the design; to give our operators and maintenance engineers a plant that is easy to run. It is a step change in how we design our new engineering projects and has the potential to generate sig- nificant cost savings." Less reliance on expensive physical prototypes will also help the form lower its carbon foot- print by keeping design in the virtual, rather than the real, world. system while at the same time building up a library of standard simulated components such as reservoirs, pumping stations and boreholes which will speed the project as it is rolled out across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Sussex and Kent. racing cars and other vehicles, to help optimise parts of the South- ern Water network. "At first sight, the challenges of strategic planning of water sup- plies might appear very different to those of designing a state-of- the-art car, truck or bus," Rachel Ashmole, project director at Ricardo, says. "The automotive industry makes intensive use of simulation so¡ware to optimise the many fluid-based processes in both the combustion and coolant systems of modern vehicles and we can adapt our so¡ware to help us develop advanced control sys- tems for water networks." Drew Brown, Southern Water's project manager, added: "The applications might be different and distances, speeds and pressures very different, but the physics is the same. We're delighted with how this collabo- ration is working." With the IGNITE suite adapted, the next phase in the project will be to model the whole of the Brighton water distribution "It is a step change in how we design our new engineering projects and has the potential to generate significant cost savings" Nevil Muncaster, Yorkshire Water Good monthT- Bad month

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