The research and development project SKATE ‘Schiffs-Konzepte für die Anwendung innovativer Techniken zur Energieeinsparung’ (ship concepts for innovative energy saving devices), co-funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi), aims at finding and optimizing energy saving appendages for inland waterway vessels. Together with FRIENDSHIP SYSTEMS, the partners involved in this project are the Duisburg Development Centre for Ship Technology and Transport Systems (DST) and the Bremen based ship design office Maritime A-Design.
The considered appendages consist of fins that are attached on the starboard and port side of a barge’s stern. In a similar way to the bulbous bow on seagoing vessels, the flow around these appendages creates a local flow field which can create its own wave system. The total wave system of the ship and the local wave system of the appendages interfere and reduce or even out local waves. Therefore, the appendages will reduce the total system’s wave energy, which in the end leads to a saving in required power.
Apart from supporting the partners in setting up parametric models and optimizations, FRIENDSHIP SYSTEMS’s main R&D targets are to increase the flexibility and robustness when running distributed computations in a grid, as well as the development of efficient optimization methods for computationally expensive cases.
Funded by the Federal Republic of Germany, Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology on the orders of the German Bundestag (Gefördert durch die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Zuwendungsgeber: Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie aufgrund eines Beschlusses des Deutschen Bundestages).