Marine Dual Fuel engines have been proved an attractive solution to improve the shipping industry sustainability and environmental footprint. Compared to the conventional diesel engines, the use of additional components to accommodate the natural gas feeding is associated with several safety implications. To ensure the engine safe operation, appropriate engine control and safety systems are of vital importance, whilst potential safety implications due to sensors and actuators faults or failures must be considered. This study aims at investigating the safety issues of a marine dual fuel (DF) engine considering critical operating scenarios, which are identified by employing a Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis. An existing verified digital twin (DT) of the investigated DF engine, capable of predicting the engine response at steady state and transient conditions with sufficient accuracy is employed to simulate the engine operation for the identified scenarios. The simulated scenarios results analysis is used to support the risk priority number assessment and identify the potential safety implications by considering the manufacturer alarm limits. Appropriate measures are recommended for the investigated DF engine safety performance improvement. This study demonstrates a methodology integrating existing safety methods with state-of-the-art simulation tools for facilitating and enhancing the safety assessment process of marine DF engines considering both steady state conditions and transient operation with main focus on switching operating modes.

船用双燃料发动机已被证明是改善航运业可持续性和环境足迹的有吸引力的解决方案。与传统的柴油发动机相比，使用额外的部件来适应天然气供给与几个安全问题有关。为确保发动机安全运行，适当的发动机控制和安全系统至关重要，同时必须考虑传感器和执行器故障或故障造成的潜在安全影响。本研究旨在调查考虑到关键操作场景的船用双燃料 (DF) 发动机的安全问题，这些场景是通过采用故障模式、影响和关键性分析来确定的。所研究的 DF 引擎的现有验证数字孪生 (DT)，能够以足够的准确度预测发动机在稳态和瞬态条件下的响应被用来模拟已识别场景的发动机运行。模拟场景结果分析用于支持风险优先级数评估，并通过考虑制造商警报限制来识别潜在的安全影响。建议采取适当措施来改善所调查的 DF 发动机安全性能。本研究展示了一种将现有安全方法与最先进的仿真工具相结合的方法，以促进和增强船用 DF 发动机的安全评估过程，同时考虑稳态条件和瞬态操作，主要关注切换操作模式。