Following a request from Shipowners Schulte Group and Costamare, the lines of a 9,000TEU container ship series were significantly improved in a joint venture of the Chinese design office Maric and Germanischer Lloyd's subsidiary FutureShip.
As a result of the optimisation, a smaller main engine can be installed than originally anticipated. Fuel consumption was reduced by more than 10 perent and CO2 emissions by more than 90 tonnes per day.
FutureShip's optimisation procedure generated 15,000 different hull designs and evaluated them numerically. The evaluation was based on computational fluid dynamics, where the flow around the ship is simulated in the computer to determine the actually required propulsion power.
The most efficient design was compared to the base design in model tests, which were performed in December at the Hamburg Ship Model Basin (HSVA). The optimised model had a significantly lower total resistance than the base design. For the real ship this corresponds to substantial fuel and cost savings per day.
The 9,000 TEU container ship series will be built in China, with delivery of the first vessel scheduled for 2013.