Optimal routing model for wind-assisted ship

Aimed to the global important demand of energy-saving and emission-reduction, and urgent need of transoceanic crossings to cut down fuel costs, this paper focused on route optimization model to provide theoretical basis and technical support for wind-assisted ship. Firstly, it was found that the propulsive efficiency of ocean wind field was high as auxiliary power by the analysis of its monthly means speed. Secondly, the route was discretized to a series of way-points which can be considered as small deviations to generate a new route, then the “minimum fuel consumption” was taken as optimization objective, and through established of ship motion equations. The optimization model was built and cost function was determined. It is found that the route optimization model designed in this paper can be applied to solve optimization of wind-assisted ship routing, and thus provides theoretical guidance to further study on wind-assisted projects.