Transportation Research Part D 62 (2018) 685–698

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Transportation Research Part D

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/trd

Dynamic optimization of ship energy efficiency considering time-

T
varying environmental factors
⁎
Kai Wanga,c,d, Xinping Yana,b,c, , Yupeng Yuana,c,e, Xiaoli Jiangd, Xiao Lind,
Rudy R. Negenbornd
a
Reliability Engineering Institute, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430063, China
b
National Engineering Research Center for Water Transportation Safety (WTSC), MOST, Wuhan 430063, China
c
Key Laboratory of Marine Power Engineering & Technology, (MOT), Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430063, China
d
Faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 2, Delft 2628 CD, The Netherlands
e
Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0FA, UK

A R T IC LE I N F O ABS TRA CT

Keywords: Nowadays, optimization of ship energy efficiency attracts increasing attention in order to meet
Ship energy efficiency the requirement for energy conservation and emission reduction. Ship operation energy effi-
Speed optimization ciency is significantly influenced by environmental factors such as wind speed and direction,
Dynamic optimization water speed and depth. Owing to inherent time-variety and uncertainty associated with these
Model predictive control
various factors, it is very difficult to determine optimal sailing speeds accurately for different legs
Energy conservation and emission reduction
of the whole route using traditional static optimization methods, especially when the weather
conditions change frequently over the length of a ship route. Therefore, in this paper, a novel
dynamic optimization method adopting the model predictive control (MPC) strategy is proposed
to optimize ship energy efficiency accounting for these time-varying environmental factors.
Firstly, the dynamic optimization model of ship energy efficiency considering time-varying en-
vironmental factors and the nonlinear system model of ship energy efficiency are established. On
this basis, the control algorithm and controller for the dynamic optimization of ship energy ef-
ficiency (DOSEE) are designed. Finally, a case study is carried out to demonstrate the validity of
this optimization method. The results indicate that the optimal sailing speeds at different time
steps could be determined through the dynamic optimization method. This method can improve
ship energy efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions effectively.

1. Introduction

Waterway transportation plays a key role in the international trade. The total trade volume of world seaborne shipments is more
than 10 billion tons making over 80% of the total world merchandise trade in 2015 (UNCTAD/RMT). However, the induced problems
including high energy consumption and serious environmental pollution could not be neglected. Accounting for more than 60% of the
total operational costs, ship fuel expenses lead to a huge impact on the competitiveness of shipping companies. On the other hand,
according to the research by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), maritime transport emitted 938 million tons of CO2
constituting 2.6% of the world’s total emissions in 2012 and it will increase by 150–250% by 2050 if no further measures are taken
(Marine Environment Protection Committee, 2014). Inland waterway transport also has this problem. Take the Yangtze River as an
example, there are about 60,000 ships sailing on it, achieving 1.92 billion tons of cargo transportation in 2013 (Yan et al., 2011). The

⁎
Corresponding author at: National Engineering Research Center for Water Transportation Safety (WTSC), MOST, Wuhan 430063, China.
E-mail address: xpyan@whut.edu.cn (X. Yan).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2018.04.005

1361-9209/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

K. Wang et al. Transportation Research Part D 62 (2018) 685–698

consumed energy of this large number of ships results in up to 5.27 million tons of CO2 emissions, which should arouse wide concern
for the shipping industry (Yan et al., 2010).
According to the IMO regulation, energy efficiency operational indicator (EEOI), which expresses the operation efficiency in terms
of CO2 emissions per unit of transport work, is used for measuring ship energy efficiency, as expressed in the following equation
(International Maritime Organization, 2010). In which, j represents fuel type; FCj is the total fuel consumption on the voyage, Ccarbon
is the carbon content of the fuel j; mcargo is the mass of transported cargo; Dis is the voyage distance. For a given voyage, the fuel type,
cargo capacity and the sailing distance is relatively fixed. Therefore, one method to reduce EEOI is to cut down the fuel consumption
of the ship during the whole voyage.

∑ FCj × Ccarbon
j
EEOI =
mc argo × Dis (1)

In order to improve ship energy efficiency, IMO has proposed some relevant measures including technical and operational
measures, such as new energy applications (Beşikçi et al., 2016), propulsion system optimization design (Zhao et al., 2016), ship
navigation optimization (Wang et al., 2015b, c) etc. In the case of in-service ships, a lot of research on speed optimization has been
performed in order to improve energy efficiency (Corbett et al., 2009; Chang and Wang, 2014; Chang and Chang, 2013; Psaraftis and
Kontovas, 2013; Psaraftis and Kontovas, 2014; Magirou et al., 2015; Fagerholt et al., 2010). Norstad et al. (2011) suggested that
taking variable speed into consideration can significantly improve profit. Lindstad et al. (2011) studied the impact of speed reduction
on the CO2 emissions and transportation cost, and concluded that the shipping industry has much potential to reduce CO2 emissions.
Ronen (2011) focused on the determination of the ship speed and the number of ships for a container line by establishing a cost model
to reduce the operating cost of the route. Recently, research on the optimization of ship energy efficiency has paid more and more
attention to the large influence of navigational environment on the ship fuel consumption (Wang et al., 2015a; Chen et al., 2013; Lu
et al., 2015; Beşikçi et al., 2015). Meng et al. (2016) focused on modeling the relationship between the fuel consumption rate and its
determinants, including sailing speed, displacement, and weather conditions by using the shipping log data. Wang and Meng (2012)
found that the fuel consumption even under the same sailing speed is different because of the different weather conditions and sea
conditions. Furthermore, they established a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model to determine the optimal sailing speed for
container ships.
In general, these methods only study the speed optimization of sea-going ships from the perspective of maritime logistics. In
contrast, few studies have been done on the speed optimization of inland river ships (Sun et al., 2013; Yan et al., 2015; Wang et al.,
2017b). The complex navigational environment of the inland waterway makes it rather difficult to decide the best sailing speeds for
the inland river ships. Sun et al. (2013) calculated and analyzed the EEOI of an inland river ship under different working conditions
based on experimental data. They demonstrated the huge impact of sailing speed and environmental factors on the energy efficiency
of inland river ships. Yan et al. (2015) conducted a sensitivity analysis about the effect of environmental factors on ship energy
efficiency by adopting a neural network method. On this basis, Wang et al. (2017b) proposed a quasi-static optimization method of
engine speed through route division based on the statistical analysis of big environmental data, which took a step forward in the
optimization of ship energy efficiency considering various navigational environments.
The above-mentioned speed optimization methods considering navigational environment are based on the static/quasi-static
information on weather conditions from the weather forecast. In fact, weather forecast becomes less accurate over a long period of
time due to inherent time-variety and uncertainty associated with these environmental factors. These static/quasi-static optimization
algorithms could not ensure the real-time optimal energy efficiency during the entire voyage, due to the continuously varying
environment. Therefore, it is better to develop a dynamic optimization and control method to improve ship energy efficiency con-
sidering the real-time updated environmental information. MPC is an on-line optimization-based control technique which updates
decision making in response to real-time information over a given horizon (Negenborn and Maestre, 2014). The main characteristic of
MPC is to use the rolling optimization strategy and can compensate for the disturbance caused by uncertainties of continuously
varying parameters. Due to this advantage, it already has wide applicability in maritime transportation such as energy-efficient
container handling and control of waterborne AGVs (Xin et al., 2015; Zheng et al., 2017; Negenborn and Maestre, 2014; Zheng et al.,
2016). Therefore, MPC can also be used to deal with the dynamic optimization problem of ship energy efficiency considering time-
varying environmental factors in this paper. In addition, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is used to solve the
established dynamic optimization model to obtain the optimal sailing speed under the real-time environment because of its ability to
explore the problem’s search space with lower computational complexity, especially in cases of complicated and non-linear objective
functions or constraints (Kornelakis, 2010). Compared with the genetic algorithm, PSO has the advantage of faster convergence and
fewer control parameters, and it has been widely used in some optimization problems (Wang et al., 2016b; 2017a). Thus; we apply
this method to determine the optimal sailing speeds under different environmental conditions.
The objective of this paper is to achieve the dynamic optimization of ship energy efficiency considering time-varying environ-
mental factors. By the adoption of MPC strategy, the optimal sailing speeds at different time steps can be determined to compensate
for the disturbance caused by changing environmental factors. The decision and control method can assist the operators to fully tap
the potential of ship operation energy efficiency optimization. The contributions of this study are twofold. From the perspective of
theory, we establish the ship energy efficiency model considering time-varying environmental factors, so that it can effectively
describe the ship energy efficiency under time-varying weather conditions. From the practical perspective, we extend the static and/
or quasi-static method to a dynamic optimization method based on real-time updated environmental information. We demonstrate

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Step n
…… …… V(1, n) B
…… ……
Step 2 ……
V(1, 2) V (2, 2) V(3, 2) V(n-1, 2) B
Step 1
t2 t3 t4 …… tn-1 tn
V(1,1) V(2, 1) A2 V(3, 1) A3 V(4, 1) A4 V(n, 1) B
A A1 An
t0 S1 t1 S2 t2 S3 t3 S4 t4 …… tn-1 Sn tn
Wind speed
Wind direction
Wind speed Wind speed Water speed
Water depth
Wind direction Wind direction
Water speed …… Water speed ……
Wind speed Water depth Water depth Environmental factors at different positions between An and B

Wind direction
Water speed
Environmental factors at different positions between A1 and B
Water depth

Environmental factors at different positions between A and B

Fig. 1. Illustration of dynamic optimization problem.

that the developed algorithm and the designed controller can achieve the real-time optimized ship energy efficiency under the time-
varying environment.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 illustrates the problem and the method used in this paper. Then, the
dynamic optimization model of ship energy efficiency considering time-varying environment is established and the MPC-based
dynamic optimization algorithm and controller design are described in Section 3. Afterwards, a case study is conducted to de-
monstrate the effectiveness of the proposed dynamic optimization method in Section 4. Finally, conclusions and discussion are
presented in Section 5.

2. Problem statement and method

2.1. Problem statement

During a voyage, the traditional static/quasi-static speed optimization methods are mainly based on the accurate forecasting
weather information while not taking into account the continuously varying environment. These methods cannot ensure that the
ship's energy efficiency is continuously optimal, especially when the navigational environment changes significantly and frequently
over the length of the sailing route. Therefore, it is better to adopt the dynamic optimization method for the optimal speed de-
termination considering the continuously varying environment, as shown in Fig. 1. A whole route can be divided into n legs with n
time steps. At the first time step, by obtaining the navigational environment from the port A to the destination B, the optimal speed
under the current environment at each leg can be determined through the established optimization model and algorithm. Then, the
ship will be controlled sailing at the speed of V(1,1), which is the determined optimal speed of the first leg at the time step 1.
With the time going on, the real-time updated navigational environment will be obtained again before arriving at position A1.
Afterwards, by reapplying the established optimization model and algorithm, it is possible to determine the optimal speeds under the
updated environmental conditions for the remaining n-1 legs. When the ship arrives at A1, it will be navigated at the re-optimized
speed of V(1,2) obtained at the second time step. In a similar way, continuous multiple optimizations would be conducted until the
ship finally reaches the destination B. Therefore, the dynamic optimization method can compensate for the distortion of the opti-
mization result caused by the change of the navigational environment over time. It can ensure the optimal solution of the system at
each time step, that is, the ship can sail at the optimal speed at each time step.

2.2. Method

2.2.1. Model predictive control

MPC is an optimization-based control strategy, as shown in Fig. 2 (Zheng et al., 2017). Its current control action is obtained by
solving a finite time-domain optimization problem at each time step, and only decision for the upcoming step will be implemented.
Compared with other control algorithms, MPC has its own characteristics and obvious advantages including: (i) its explicit way of
handling constraints on actions, states and outputs; (ii) adopt rolling optimization strategy to compensate disturbance in time,
achieving better dynamic control performance; (iii) suitable for systems with constraint, large delay and nonlinearity (Negenborn and
Maestre, 2014).
With these advantages, MPC has aroused wide applications in the field of ship control and energy management. Zheng et al.

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Past Future

Output of static strategy

y
Output of dynamic strategy
Static control strategy

u
Dynamic control strategy

k k+1 k+2 …… k+NS

Fig. 2. Illustration of MPC (Zheng et al., 2017).

(2016) designed a predictive path following with arrival time awareness controller by adopting MPC strategy for Automated Guided
Vehicles (AGVs). The controller can fulfill tasks successfully while meet system design criteria very well. Liu et al. (2015) achieved
autonomous navigation control of underactuated vessels (USVs) considering environmental disturbances, by designing a trajectory
tracking controller using Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC). In addition, Haseltalab et al. (2016) proposed to adopt MPC
strategy for the combined motion control and energy management of hybrid ships, with the consideration of disturbance caused by
surrounding environment. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method. Thus it can be seen, MPC is very
suitable for the systems which have large disturbance and nonlinearity. Therefore, we propose to adopt MPC strategy for dynamic
optimization of ship energy efficiency considering time-varying environmental factors.

2.2.2. Dynamic optimization process of ship energy efficiency

In this paper, the proposed dynamic optimization process of ship energy efficiency based on MPC strategy is shown in Fig. 3. It can
be achieved through the following steps:

Step 1: Initialize and/or measure the state of the system at time step k;
Step 2: Establish the ship energy efficiency model considering time-varying environment factors;
Step 3: Formulate and solve the optimal sailing speeds in different legs under the related constraint at time step k;
Step 4: Establish ship navigation optimization system nonlinear model for improving energy efficiency and executive the first
control input;
Step 5: k ← k + 1 and go to Step 1 until the optimization process is finished (when k > M, M is the total time step), then the
optimal trajectories can be achieved.

Fig. 3. Dynamic optimization process of ship energy efficiency.

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Among others, the steps 2, 3, & 4 are critical in order to realize the dynamic optimization of ship energy efficiency considering
time-varying environment factors. In this regard, they are illustrated in detail in the following section.

3. Dynamic optimization model and control method of ship energy efficiency

3.1. Dynamic optimization model of ship energy efficiency considering time-varying environmental factors

The energy consumption of a ship is mainly used to overcome the sailing resistance. After calculating the sailing resistance under
different environmental conditions, the fuel consumption of the main engine can be obtained through the analysis of energy
transmission among the ship hull and propeller as well as the main engine. The sailing resistance mainly includes the calm water
resistance, wave adding resistance, wind resistance and shallow water resistance. After calculating these resistances using the method
in (Holtrop and Mennen, 1982; Kwon, 2008; Townsin et al., 1975; Hu, 1986) respectively, the total resistance of the ship can be
expressed by the following equation. It is a function of sailing speed, wind speed and direction, wave height, water speed and depth
etc.
Rship = RT + Rwave + Rwind + Rshallow = FR (Vs,Vw,Vwind,H ,h) (2)

where, RT denotes the total hydrostatic resistance (N); Rwave denotes the wave adding resistance (N); Rwind denotes the wind resistance
(N); Rshallow represents the shallow water resistance (N); Vs denotes the ship sailing speed to water (m/s); Vw is the water speed (m/s);
Vwind, H and h are wind speed (m/s), water depth (m) and wave height (m) respectively.
When the ship sails at a specific speed, The output power of the main engine can be calculated by the following equation (Wang
et al., 2016a):
Rship ·VS
PB =
k 0·ηS ηG ηO ηH ηR (3)
where, k0 is the number of propellers; ηS is transmission efficiency of the shaft; ηG is the efficiency of the gearbox; ηR is relative
rotating efficiency; ηO is open water efficiency of the propeller, ηO = (KT·J)/(KQ·2π), in which KT is the thrust coefficient of propeller
and KQ is the torque coefficient, and J is the propeller advance coefficient; ηH is the hull efficiency, ηH = (1 − t)/(1 − w), in which t is
the thrust deduction coefficient and w is the wake coefficient.
Therefore, the output power of the main engine can be rewritten by the following equation:
Rship ·VS ·K Q·2π·(1−w )
PB =
k 0·ηS ηG ηR ·KT ·J ·(1−t ) (4)

In which, the KT and KQ can be obtained by the interpolation polynomials method in (Bernitsas et al., 1981), which can be expressed
as the following equations:
KT = fKT (J ); K Q = fKQ (J ) (5)
When given the specific Vs and Rship, we can get the specific value of J by the following equation:

K Rship
ln ⎛ T2 ⎞ = ln ⎛⎜ 2 2 2
⎞⎟ = f (J )
⎝J ⎠ ⎝ ρ (1−t )(1−w ) VS D ⎠ (6)
where, ρ denotes the density of water (kg/m ); D is diameter of the propeller (m).
3

Then, the energy consumption per unit distance of the main engines can be obtained by the following equation:
k 0·PB ·gmain
qmain = = k 0·Fq (Vg ,Vw,Vwind,H ,h)·gmain
3600·Vg (7)
where, qmain is the fuel consumption per unit distance of the main engines (g/m); Vg is the ship sailing speed to ground (m/s),
Vg = Vs ± Vw; gmain is the specific fuel consumption rate of the main engine (g/(kw h)).
As the main engines consume the most fuel, only the fuel consumption of the main engines is considered in this study. Therefore,
the ship energy efficiency could be rewritten as the following equation.
M
T limit
∑ FCj × Ccarbon ∑ (qmain (k )·(Vg (k )· M
)) × Ccarbon
j k=1
EEOI = =
mc argo × D mc argo × D (8)
where Tlimit denotes the constraint of the sailing time (s); M means the total time steps of the whole voyage; qmain (k) and Vg(k) are the
fuel consumption per unit distance (g/m) and sailing speed (m/s) of the kth time step respectively.
Through the ship energy efficiency model considering time-varying environmental factors, the fuel consumption and sailing time
corresponding to different sailing speeds under different environmental conditions can be calculated. For the navigation optimization
system, it is a nonlinear optimization model. The optimization target and constraints of the optimization system can be expressed in
the following equations.

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M−k + 1
⎛q Tlim it ⎞ Ccarbon
min EEOI = ∑ ⎛
main (k )· Vg (k )·
⎞ ·
M ⎠⎠ mc arg o × D
, ∀ k ∈ {1,2,···}
k=1 ⎝ ⎝ (9)

M−k + 1
T
∑ ⎛Vg (k )· limit ⎞ = Stotal , ∀ k ∈ {1,2,···}
k=1 ⎝ M ⎠ (10)

Nmin < fengine speed (Vg (k ) ± Vw (k )) < Nmax , ∀ k ∈ {1,2,···} (11)

Vmin < Vg (k ) ± Vw (k ) < Vmax , ∀ k ∈ {1,2,···} (12)

where Vw(k) are water speed (m/s) of the kth time step; Stotal denotes the total distance of the whole route (m); fengine_speed(Vg(k)) is
the engine speed of the kth time step (r/min).
Eq. (9) is the optimization objective function, in which the sailing speeds at different time steps are the optimization variables. Eq.
(10) ensures that the ship can finish the whole voyage within the required time. Eqs. (11) and (12) are the physical limitations
corresponding to the engine speed and the sailing speed respectively, which can avoid overloading.

3.2. Nonlinear system model of ship energy efficiency

The adoption of MPC strategy can predict the future response of the system based on the historical information of the controlled
object, namely, the current state of the system and the current and future inputs as well as perturbations. For the problem of the
dynamic optimization of ship energy efficiency in this paper, the current state information of the system mainly includes the current
total sailing distance of the ship, and the current real-time updated environmental parameters (namely the disturbance of the system),
which can be expressed by the following equations.
k
Tlimit
Ys (k ) = Stotal (k ) = ∑ Vg (j )·
M
, ∀ k ∈ {1,2,···}
j=1 (13)

dsτ (k ) = {V wτ (k ),V wind

τ
(k ),H τ (k ),hτ (k )} , ∀ k ∈ {1,2,···} ; ∀ τ ∈ {k ,k + 1,···} (14)

Then, the dynamics of the navigation optimizaiton at the time step k can be expressed as a state-space representation in the
following equation:

Ys (k + 1) = Fs (Ys (k ),us (k ),dsk (k )), ∀ k ∈ {1,2,···} (15)

In which, the current input us(k) of the MPC is obtained by solving a finite time-domain optimal control problem, namely the Eqs. (9-
12). In this paper, the PSO algorithm, showing effectiveness in solving nonlinear optimization problem (Wang et al., 2016b; 2017a),
is used to obtain the optimal solution of the nonlinear optimization problem of Eqs. (9-12) as the input of the system, according to the
current system state. The solution processes are as follows:

Step 1: Initialize N particles with q (q = 1, …, M − k + 1) dimensions at time step k and calculate the fitness values of these
particles by using Eq. (9), and determine the individual optimal and group optimal value at time step k.
Step 2: Update the velocities and positions of these particles. The locations of the particles are changed according to their own
velocity. The updates of velocity and location of each particle at each time step can be defined by:
∼τ + 1 ∼τ ∼τ ∼τ
Vq = w·Vq + c1·r1 (∼ τ
p best q
−X q ) + c2·r2 (∼ τ
g best q
−X q ) , ∀ τ ∈ {1,2,···,τmax−1} ; ∀ q ∈ {1,2,···,M } (16)

∼τ + 1 ∼τ ∼τ + 1
X q = X q + Vq , ∀ τ ∈ {1,2,···,τmax−1} ; ∀ q ∈ {1,2,···,M } (17)
∼ ∼
where τ is the current iterations times; ∼
pbest is the previous best; ∼
gbest is the global best; X is the particle’s position; V is the particle’s
velocity; c1 and c2 denote the learning factors; r1 and r2 are the random numbers between 0 and 1; and w is the inertia weight.

Step 3: Recalculate fitness values of each particle which meets the constraints in Eqs. (10-12), then update the individual and
population optimal value.
Step 4: Iterative Step 2 and Step 3 until the algorithm converges, then the optimal individual representing the optimal sailing
speeds can be obtained as (Vg (k ),…,V
g (M)) , which is also the input of the system (uŝ (k ),…,uŝ (M)) at the current time step k.

3.3. Controller design for the dynamic optimization of ship energy efficiency

Above all, the overall algorithm based on MPC strategy for the dynamic optimization of ship energy efficiency is summarized in
the following algorithm.

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Fig. 4. Controller for dynamic optimization of ship energy efficiency.

Algorithm 1 Algorithm for the dynamic optimization of ship energy efficiency

1. Initialize the system state and environmental factors at time step k;

2. Measure the current state of the system Ys(k) and the environmental factors dsτ (k ) ; ∀ k ∈ {1,2,···} ; ∀ τ ∈ {k ,k + 1,···} at time
step k;
3. Solve the nonlinear optimization model with the objective function in Eq. (9) and the constraints in Eqs. (10-12) based on the
PSO algorithm, and obtain the optimal solution over the horizon: (Vg (k ),…,V
g (M)) as the planned input (uŝ (k ),…,uŝ (M)) of the
system;
4. Only execute the first optimal decision us(k) by using Eq. (15), resulting in the new system state Ys(k + 1);
5. k ← k+1 and go to Step 2 until the optimization process is finished (when k > M, M is the total time step);

According to the above algorithm, we design a controller for dynamic optimization of ship energy efficiency (DOSEE), as showed
in Fig. 4. The controller solves and obtains the optimal solution at each time step, and then inputs the first decision value to the
nonlinear dynamic navigation optimization system. This DOSEE controller can compensate for the disturbence due to environmental
changes at each time step. Through the design of this controller, the dynamic optimization of ship energy efficiency can be achieved,
so as to ensure the real-time optimal ship energy efficiency.

4. Case study

To validate the effectiveness of the proposed dynamic optimization method, we take a cruise ship and the waterway between
Jiujiang and Shanghai along the Yangtze River (also called the lower reach of the Yangtze River) as a study case. The cruise ship and
its parameters are shown in Fig. 5 and Table 1 respectively.

Fig. 5. Cruise ship on the Yangtze River.

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Table 1
Parameters of the cruise ship.
Parameter Value

Length of the ship 80 m

Width of the ship 14.8 m
Design sailing speed 28 km/h
Gross tonnage 4587 t
Design draft 2.7 m
Engine rated power 960 kW × 2
Engine rated speed 750 rpm
Propeller diameter 1.74 m

Table 2
Implementation form of the data acquisition.
Sensor Remark Sensor Remark

Wind speed sensor. To obtain the wind speed Water depth sensor. To monitor water depth

Water speed sensor. To monitor the water speed GPS receiving device. To acquire sailing speed

Shaft power tester. To collect speed and torque Fuel consumption sensor. To gather fuel consumption

4.1. Data acquisition and analysis

(1) Data acquisition

The implementation form of the data acquisition is shown in Table 2. The wind speed and direction, water depth and speed were
collected by the installed wind speed sensor, water depth and speed sensor. In addition, we also acquire the real-time sailing speed,
shaft speed and torque as well the fuel consumption through the sensors of GPS, shaft power tester and fuel consumption sensor.

(2) Analysis of environmental factors and ship energy efficiency

After collecting the data on environmental factors and ship energy efficiency, the data preprocessing ways, including removing
the obvious abnormal data and interpolating the missing data, is conducted to obtain the final valid data. The navigational en-
vironment for different locations of the whole route is shown in Fig. 6 (a: wind speed; b: wind direction; c: water depth; d: water
speed). As it can be seen, there are significant differences in the navigational environmental data at different locations. The large
difference of navigational environment provides high potential for the optimization of ship energy efficiency because of the sig-
nificant differences in the energy consumption under different navigational conditions.
The ship fuel consumption under different navigational conditions is the basis for the energy efficiency optimization. Therefore,
the relationship among the navigational environment, sailing speed and the ship fuel consumption are analyzed, based on the
established ship energy efficiency model considering time-varying environmental factors in this case study. The analysis results are
shown in Fig. 7 (a: wind speed; b: wind direction; c: water depth; d: water speed). These results show that, the fuel consumption
under different environmental factors and sailing speeds are largely different, which can support the idea that the ship energy
efficiency can be improved by speed optimization under different environmental conditions.

4.2. Numerical experiment of the dynamic optimization method

From Shanghai to Jiujiang along the Yangtze River, we set the sailing time constraint is 60 h and the total time steps is 15,
according to the changing magnitude and frequency of the weather conditions. In addition, according to the characteristics of the
navigational environment, the Monte Carlo Simulation method (Fan et al., 2017) is adopted to generate the real-time updated
navigational environment of the entire route. The purpose of the numerical experiment is to verify the effectiveness of the proposed
dynamic optimization method.
By adopting the dynamic optimization algorithm proposed in this paper, the speed optimization results of different legs corre-
sponding to different time steps are obtained, as shown in Table 3. The first row of the table corresponds to the results using the static
optimization method, which does not take into account the changes in the navigational environment at each time step. The first

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Fig. 6. Distribution of navigational environment data at different locations.

results in each row corresponds to the speed optimization results by adopting the dynamic optimization algorithm which consider the
changes in the navigational environment, thereby ensuring that the ship operates at the optimal energy efficiency state at each time
step. As it can be seen from Table 3, there exists a large difference between the results using static method (the values in the first row)
and the results through the dynamic method (the first value in each row) at each time step. That is the reason why the ship energy
efficiency could be optimized more effectively.
Based on the proposed dynamic optimization method, the obtained optimal results at different time steps, including fuel con-
sumption and CO2 emissions as well as EEOI per time step, are shown in Table 4. As it can be seen, the final fuel consumption and CO2
emissions as well as EEOI are obviously different at different time steps, due to the large difference in the navigational environment.
This is the main reason why we consider the dynamic navigational environment for the ship energy efficiency optimization.

4.3. Analysis

4.3.1. Comparative analysis of different optimization methods

In order to identify the effectiveness of the proposed method, a comparative analysis is carried out. The results using static and
dynamic optimization method, including fuel consumption and CO2 emissions as well as EEOI at different time steps are shown in
Fig. 8. As it can be seen, the optimization results are different because of the time-varying environmental factors.
In addition, Table 5 shows the total fuel consumption collected by the real ship and the corresponding CO2 emissions as well as
EEOI, and the total fuel consumption and CO2 emissions as well as EEOI obtained by adopting the MPC-based dynamic optimization
method and the static optimization method. It can be seen that the dynamic optimization method proposed in this paper can reduce
fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by about 28%, compared with the practical operation of the ship with lower sailing time (it
mainly depends on the operator's experience, and the reduced percentage may be different for different operator, different sailing
time or different legs under different weather conditions). It can also reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions as well as EEOI by
about 2%, compared with the static optimization method under the same situation. Therefore, the effectiveness of the proposed
dynamic optimization method can be demonstrated.
In order to further verify the effectiveness of the proposed method in this paper, we also use the quasi-static optimization method

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Fig. 7. Illustration of the relationship between environment and ship fuel consumption.

Table 3
Optimization results of sailing speeds (m/s) at different time steps.
Items j=1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

k=1 4.7 4.5 4.0 4.6 4.5 4.2 4.3 4.2 4.4 4.6 3.9 4.3 3.5 3.8 3.6
2 4.1 4.1 4.3 4.2 4.1 4.1 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.1 4.0 4.3 4.3 4.2
3 4.2 4.1 4.1 4.1 4.2 4.2 4.1 4.1 4.3 4.2 4.2 4.3 4.2
4 4.2 4.2 4.3 4.2 4.1 4.2 4.2 4.1 4.1 4.1 4.3 4.1
5 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.1 4.2 4.0
6 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.1 4.2 4.2 4.1 4.1 4.2 4.2
7 4.2 4.1 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.1 4.1 4.2 4.2
8 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.1 4.2 4.1 4.1
9 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.1 4.0
10 4.1 4.1 4.1 4.2 4.1 4.3
11 4.1 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.1
12 4.3 4.3 4.1 4.0
13 4.0 4.2 4.2
14 4.3 4.1
15 4.1

Note: T is 60 h; j is the divided sailing time steps within each T/15 h, named there are totally 15 legs; k is the optimization step.

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Table 4
Optimization results at different time steps.
Time steps 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Fuel consumption(g/m) 7.12 8.85 9.02 8.83 8.71 8.84 8.43 8.64 8.48 8.04 8.01 8.68 7.76 8.41 7.77
CO2 emissions (g/m) 22.82 28.37 28.91 28.32 27.93 28.35 27.02 27.7 27.18 25.76 25.67 27.83 24.89 26.97 24.91
EEOI per time step (g/t·n mile) 9.21 11.46 11.67 11.43 11.28 11.45 10.91 11.19 10.98 10.4 10.36 11.24 10.05 10.89 10.06

Fig. 8. Optimization results adopting static and dynamic optimization method.

Table 5
Comparison of the results adopting different methods.
Item Dynamic optimization Quasi-static optimization Static optimization Real ship data

Total fuel consumption (kg) 7602.32 7667.01 7754.11 10563.37

Total CO2 emissions (kg) 24373.04 24580.43 24859.69 33866.16
EEOI (g/t·n mile) 10.83 10.93 11.05 15.05

proposed in reference (Wang et al., 2017b) for the same ship under the same conditions to optimize the energy efficiency. The quasi-
static optimization method is based on the sailing route division through the statistical analysis of big environmental data. The
optimization results including sailing speed, fuel consumption and CO2 emissions as well as EEOI in each kind of divided sailing legs
through this quasi-static optimization method are shown in Fig. 9. In addition, the total fuel consumption and CO2 emissions as well
as EEOI are given in Table 5. The results show that the ship energy efficiency in terms of EEOI and CO2 emissions could be improved
by only about 1% through this quasi-static optimization method comparing with the static method, while the ship energy efficiency
could be improved by about 2% through the proposed dynamic optimization method in this paper. Thus it can be seen, a good
improvement has been achieved by using the dynamic optimization method proposed in this paper.

4.3.2. Optimization result analysis considering the allowed time window

In order to verify the wide applicability of the proposed method, the speed optimization results under different sailing time
constraints by using the proposed method are analyzed in this paper. The sailing time of the ship could be set as about 60 h. However,
considering the influence of the weather condition, waiting time when calling ports and other influencing factors, it is common for
the sailing time to have 2 h deviation to update within the overall scheduling. Therefore, we analyze the optimization result con-
sidering the allowed time window from 58 h to 62 h. The numerical analysis results are shown in Fig. 10. As it can be seen, the speed
optimization results at each time steps decrease with the increase of the sailing time constraint, because larger time constraint
provides more potential for the speed reduction and better ship energy efficiency. It is consistent with the theory of slow steaming for
energy efficiency optimization.
In addition, Table 6 shows the total fuel consumption and total CO2 emissions as well as EEOI under different time constraints. As
it can be seen from the table, the dynamic optimization method shows better results than the static optimization method under
different sailing time constraints. The reduced percentage of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions as well as EEOI could be at least

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40
Sailing-speed (m/s)
35 Fuel-consumption (g/m)
CO2-emission (g/m)
30 EEOI (g/t·n mile)

25

20

15

10

0
1 2 3 4 5
Different sailing legs with different kind of environment

Fig. 9. Optimization results adopting the quasi-static optimization method.

Fig. 10. Speed optimization results under different time constraints.

Table 6
Optimization results under different time constraints.
Items 58 h 59 h 60 h 61 h 62 h

Total fuel consumption by static optimization (kg) 8166 7931 7754 7544 7375
Total CO2 emissions by static optimization (kg) 26,181 25,427 24,860 24,185 23,643
EEOI by static optimization (g/t·n mile) 11.65 11.31 11.05 10.76 10.52
Total fuel consumption by dynamic optimization (kg) 8015 7773 7602 7397 7222
Total CO2 emissions by dynamic optimization (kg) 25,695 24,920 24,373 23,716 23,155
EEOI by dynamic optimization (g/t·n mile) 11.43 11.09 10.83 10.55 10.30
Reduced percentage (%) 1.86 2.00 1.96 1.94 2.07

1.86% when the time constraint is 58 h, and would be up to 2.07% when the time constraint is 62 h. Furthermore, with the increase of
time constraints, the total fuel consumption and CO2 emissions as well as EEOI by using both the MPC-based dynamic optimization
method and the static optimization method show a significant downward trend. Therefore, we can conclude that improving the
efficiency of entering and leaving port or the efficiency of loading and unloading can create more space for the improvement of the
sailing time constraints, thus to improve the ship energy efficiency to a certain extent.

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5. Conclusions and discussion

Considering the shortcomings of traditional static/quasi-static optimization methods, the dynamic optimization method of ship
energy efficiency considering time-varying environmental factors is proposed in this paper. Based on the established ship energy
efficiency model considering time-varying environmental factors and the nonlinear dynamic system model, the model predictive
control (MPC) using the rolling optimization strategy is proposed to determine the optimal sailing speeds under the specific real-time
updated environmental factors at different time steps. The designed DOSEE controller based on the optimization algorithm can
compensate for the disturbance caused by changing environmental factors during the whole navigation. The case study illustrates the
effectiveness of the proposed method, which can achieve the real-time better ship energy efficiency under the time-varying weather
conditions. The optimization results show that the proposed method can improve ship energy efficiency more effectively than the
static optimization method by about 2%. Also, it can reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by about 28% in ideal cases,
compared with the practical operation of the ship. The amount of saved fuel per single voyage would be 2961 kg. It is a good benefit
for the shipping company, especially in the era of recession of shipping industry.
The proposed optimization method can also be used for different kinds of ships, owing to the fact that it improves ship energy
efficiency based purely on speed optimization. It should be noted that there exist more dynamic influencing factors, e.g., port
operation, transport demand, and fleet deployment and management. Therefore, the dynamic energy efficiency optimization method
of ship or even fleets, considering multiple dynamic influencing factors, would be the focus of future study. Due to the urgent
requirement of energy saving and more and more stringent regulations on emissions, shipping companies bear huge responsibility on
energy conservation and emission reduction. This paper proposes a new concept for optimizing ship energy efficiency through the
dynamic optimization method. It provides the shipping companies a new way to reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by National Key Technology Support Program (No. 2013BAG25B03), and the China Scholarship Council
under Grant 201606950063 and the Hubei Provincial Leading High Talent Training Program Funded Project (File No. HBSTD [2012]
86).

Appendix A. Supplementary material

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2018.04.005.

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