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Superior life-time operation economy of ship propellers

Objective

Many old fleets are currently operating without updating the propulsion design to new working conditions. Therefore, propulsion efficiency decays as time elapses inducing the rising of fuel consumption, contaminant gas pollution, engine maintenance costs and vibrations while ship capabilities decrease. Fishing boats and tug boats fleets are the largest fleets of boats operating all over the world.

From the smaller boats sailing near the coast to large trawler vessels, there is a wide range of fishing vessels crossing the seas. An average of the operating life in these kinds of vessels can be estimated around 25 years. Since they use to work in two different conditions (fishing and saling to/from port and searching schools in the fishing areas), the design of the propulsion is conditioned by such different working conditions. With time, propulsion becomes less and less efficient. By an appropriate economic knowledge of the actual situation of such fleets, it is desirable to estimate the cost reduction in fuel consumption and maintenance as well as gas emissions and vibration phenomena.

Economic tools together with engineering tools will be developed for the systematic updating of the propulsive (propeller and stern area) system to the new optimum working point in order to reach the main aim of the proposal. A standard methodology for this updating procedure will be the main outcome of the project.

Call for proposal

FP6-2003-TRANSPORT-3
See other projects for this call

Coordinator

UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE MADRID
EU contribution
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Address
C/Ramiro de Maeztu, 7
MADRID
Spain

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Participants (8)