Numéro : 2627 - Year : 2012
Ship trimming optimization: impact on a regular line budget
Mathieu RENAUD, CMA CGM – CMA Ships – Marseille
Jean-Baptiste BOUTILLIER, CMA CGM – CMA Ships – Marseille
Ludovic GERARD, CMA CGM – CMA Ships – Marseille
After the 2009 crisis, during which volumes felt dramatically and generating huge losses, shipping is today facing a second crisis. To restore earnings, shipping operators have implemented several measures, slow steaming being the most known, and is the one which reshaped the industry. These changes have been maintained since then and are now industry standards. Therefore new levers have been activated to go through the current crisis. Trim optimization is one of the levers that can provide substantial gains for a small initial investment. The optimum trim is obtained as a result of towing tank tests. The comparison of these model results with full scale sailed voyages gives good results. These results are disseminated as widely as possible and their implementation involves changes in behavior for all ground players on shore and at sea. Reluctances brought by these changes are quickly exceeded and substantial gains, up to 3 % of total consumption of a given ships, are observed. In the future, numerical methods might achieve these results by lowering the cost of investment. Future ships will have a design allowing them more flexibility in trimming.
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