A Study on Development of Weather Routing System-II.-Utilization of Onboard Monitoring System Data

In recent years, as a measure to reduce the effect of global warming caused by the maritime transport, vessels have been strongly advised to reduce fuel consumption. Weather Routing (WR) is a relatively inexpensive and easy way to implement the solution. However, for good operation, WR requires a good estimate of the vessel's propulsive performance at seas. In previous studies, it had been shown that ship's performance can be estimated by analyzing abstract logbook data. In this paper, the authors proposed a method for estimating the vessel's propulsive performance using thrust data obtained from an onboard monitoring system and using several possible parameterable methods. For carrying out the study, an Onboard Monitoring System was fitted onboard a 4,430TEU container ship for data collection. A minute examination of the collected data showed a clear relation between ocean wave state and thrust. A set of formulas was established to calculate the thrust increase relying on wave height and direction. The obtained equation allowed the authors to reconstruct an actual voyage within a 3% margin of error, showing the good performance of the proposed estimation method. WR simulations showed also the potential reduction of fuel consumption reduction achievable using the estimated vessel performances.