Performance Prediction Program for Wind-Assisted Cargo Ships

Wind-Assisted Propulsion Systems (WAPS) can play a key role in achieving the IMO 2050 targets on reducing the total annual GHG emissions from international shipping by at least 50%. The present project deals with the development of a six degree of freedom (DoF) Performance Prediction Program (PPP) for wind-assisted cargo ships aimed at contributing knowledge on WAPS performance.

It is a fast and easy tool, able to predict the performance of any commercial ship with three possible different WAPS installed: rotor sails, rigid wing sails and DynaRigs; with only the ship main particulars and general dimensions as input data. The tool is based on semi-empirical methods and a WAPS aerodynamic database created from published data on lift and drag coefficients, which can be interpolated with the aim to scale to different sizes and configurations.

A model validation is carried out to evaluate its reliability. The results are compared with the real sailing data of a Long Range 2 (LR2) class wind-assisted tanker vessel, the Maersk Pelican. The study indicates that the PPP shows good agreement with the technology suppliers’ own modelling tool and reasonable agreement with the trends of the real sailing measurements.

However, for downwind sailing conditions, the predictions are more conservative than the measured values. Lastly, results showing and comparing power savings for the three different WAPS are presented. Rotor Sails are found to be the most efficient WAPS studied with a much higher potential of driving force generation per square meter of projected sail area.