Can one simply cut off the bulbous bow of a ship and put another one on? Yes, it is actually possible. And you can save up to 5% fuel from doing it. So what sounds like plastic surgery will be carried out over the next year on 2 of our vessel classes, or 10 vessels in total, which will have their bulbous bows replaced in order to make them more fuel efficient.
The first round of ‘nose jobs’ have already been done. In November, Maersk Buffalo and Maersk Baltimore underwent the surgery at Qingdao Shipyard in China, and since they are now being chartered out they also got new identities.
They left the shipyard as Seago Bremerhaven and Seago Antwerp, respectively.
Why a bulbous bow?
But why do ships even need a bulbous bow? The reason is that when a ship sails, it generates waves where the ship bow splits the water. These waves then hit the front side, the so-called shoulder of the ship, and in order to break them, the ship needs energy, i.e. fuel. The faster the ship sails, the higher the waves and the more energy it needs to get through the waves it creates itself.
A bulbous bow however can create counterwaves that neutralise the waves created by the ship sailing through the water, and thus reduce the amount of energy required to move forward.
A bulbous bow works best with a certain speed range. If the ship sails at a different speed range than the one the bulbous bow is designed for, the bulbous bow has no, or in the worst case even a negative effect.
This is not entirely correct: Any ship creates a number of different waves: starting from the actual bow, to its forward shoulder, aft shoulder and even the stern. Energy is used to create waves and the bulbous bow simply moves the bow wave forward to a point where the combination of allwaves are most neutral.
Fasinating….somebody at MMT must have made the pay-back calculation! With a 5% saving is must be short! But what if they have to increase the speed again? Maybe an idea with flexible bulbous bow?
It is the best idea in ages, because everybody in our days is looking for fuel-savings, but what is the speed needed to get this function. How is the real speed-range.
best Idea as to save up 5% of fuel. Another Great Job done by the team.
Apart from various tools practised onboard Maersk vessels for fuel savings, we can implement minimum ballast carriage policy and certainly it will prove fuel efficient. That too at no additional cost unlike other tools where we invest huge amounts in a hope to gain at later stage. I myself keep on advising my bosses on every available occasion. But until now it’s only been implemented onboard our tankers. Why not to try on container ships too. It’s not an assumption as I myself did this and proved the endeavour very fruitful in other companies. Hope to see this idea helping our fuel efficiency campaign.
This is great. We just talked about bulbous bow design with our Resistance and Propulsion classes yesterday .
All that is just another waste of money, and increasing the transportation cost.
All of you left behind the fact that the investment in the engine/s was huge when the vessel was built and now is being underutilized, nevertheless the cost of the ship is still being paid by the customer, no wonder there is not any real transportation increment, I’m tired to hear of these nonsense of so call great invention, when for example these inverse bows being introduce as advance technology, when in fact it was use by the bathyheships from the late 19th early 20th century, as well as the so call E-Shps, a joke, since all the have done is to make a containership looks like a tanker, and of course if you make a ship longer by physics it can go faster with the same power and carry more containers called” MOMENTUM OF INERTIA”, all they are making are more expensive ships that are not helping to improve any country economies , since is more expensive every day for a small or medium producer to export its products in these ships.
Have any of you seen all those long canoes being driven by an small engine going at very fast speed without any planning hull and no bulbous bow, “it was invented thousand of years ago”.
Stop making everything so expensive, and use common sense.
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I would add that it creates smaller waves reducing erosion in seaways. May be going at a better speed for that reason.( Likely also as a side benifit reduced noise for mammals.) I occasional take aerial photos of container ships and the bulbs, too large, appeared rather often to be on very many ships, partially out of the water. And thus not effective! For energy It is evident that when there is white water produced in breaking waves there is considerable energy loss.