Weather Routing Benefit for Different Wind Propulsion Systems

Impact of weather routing on a post-panamax bulk carrier equipped with different wind propulsion systems was studied. The studied wind propulsion systems were rotor sails, wing sails, and suction wings and the studied route was a typical bulk carrier route between China and Brazil. A 4 degrees of freedom (4-DoF) performance prediction program was used to generate a performance model of the ship with different wind propulsion devices and the performance models were used in the voyage optimization. The voyage optimization simulations were carried out using historical weather data during the years 2015 to 2019 with one departure per week on both ways. It was found that there is a significant reduction in fuel consumption when weather routing is used on wind propulsion ships, but the magnitudes of the weather routing benefit vary from system to system depending on its versatility. Higher benefits from weather routing were found first for rotor sails, then for suction wings, and finally for wing sails.