H2020 GATERS Project – How we can explain 35-55% energy saving obtained from the target ship ERGE

Noriyuki Sasaki

University of Strathclyde, UK

 

Abstract

European collaborative project GATERS led by Prof. Mehmet Atlar revealed the fact that “Gate Rudder System (GRS)” presents 35-55% energy savings addition to the excellent performance of maneuvering including her port operation, underwater noise radiation (URN) and quitter engine room (huge reduction of torque variation). The first vessel equipped with GRS “Shigenobu” was delivered in the end of 2017, and her superior energy saving was confirmed by so called, “the tag of war”, using her sister ship “Sakura” in late of 2020. This joint sea trial stopped the argue of different ideas surrounding us such as two-digit energy saving is suspicious. The three years monitoring data which demonstrate 14% (sea trial) to 33% (North bound voyage of Japan data) was accepted by all the people who are engaged in this project. The one outstanding test can be valuable than the three years monitoring data. However, the big discrepancy with the model test and CFD (computational Fluid Dynamics) still remained because of the lacking information from the scientific aspects. GATERS is led by the University of Strathclyde (NAOME) academic team under the EC’s H2020 framework (Grant Agreement: 860337) program with an approx. 6M EUR budget. This retrofit project is now revealing slowly the secret of GRS which was not discovered by existing model tests, existing CFD data. The massive effort to explain the 35-55% energy saving using the accurate data with before and after of target ship ERGE is still on going. This presentation gives the light to this excellent academic works which is led by the university.