Progress observed from the Bridge Wing

The OPTIWISE project is well underway now after one year from the start of the journey. And I am happy to give you a little update on the progress that we make. I’ll do this from my position at the bridge wing, as one of the discussions in the past year relates to the allowable blocking of sails of the view from the bridge on ships utilizing wind propulsion.

A blocked view could of course be resolved by positioning the bridge close to the bow of the ship. This however comes with comfort issues (more motions) and safety issues (larger impacts on superstructure by green water. Another solution could be to create a view with properly positioned video cameras. It is not in the scope of this project to discuss this at length with class societies and regulatory bodies, but it is our task to acknowledge the issue and propose solutions.

We have just had our General Assembly meeting in Gothenburg (late June 2023), hosted by RISE (former SSPA). The general picture that emerged was that the project is well on track but that some major hurdles need to be taken in the year ahead of us.

We have identified the tools and methods that we will use in the design of the three sail supported ships: A bulk carrier, a tanker and a cruise vessel. Most of these methods already exist but need to be extended for a more holistic optimization of the entire sail supported ship. Apart from that, they need to be applied in a workflow for the optimization. To get this workflow running and let it produce results is one of the forthcoming challenges. Another challenge is in the quantification of  the economic consequences of sail support and the potentially increasing uncertainty in arrival times when maximizing fuel savings.

To involve and engage all partners in a sufficiently early stage to the optimization process we have introduced Model Based System Engineering MBSE, which offers us a joint data storage on the ship design. It also keeps track of all decisions taken during the design. This facilitates partners to bring in their expertise on subsystems or aspects of the design that we need to incorporate in a balanced way from the beginning.

And so, we have set sail and are well underway into largely uncharted waters eagerly looking forward from the bridge wing!

Tom van Terwisga (MARIN)