On the Fuel Saving Operation for Coastal Merchant Ships using Weather Routing

It is well known that Weather Routing is one of the effective ship operation methods to reduce fuel consumption and many studies have been conducted to develop the effective calculation methods. However, most studies were performed focusing on the ocean going ships, and there were few studies made for coastal ships. The authors propose a minimum fuel route calculation method for coastal ships that use the precise forecasted environmental data and the propulsion performance data of the ship on actual seas. In the proposed method, we use the Dijkstra’s algorithm to calculate an optimum minimum fuel route suitable for coastal ships. Simulation study was carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method using two coastal ships. As the result of study, the authors confirmed that the proposed calculation method is effective for fuel consumption reduction and is applicable for the operation of coastal merchant ships.