Research project on the reduction of hull resistance of vessels by means of hydrofoiling

The task

The RUBIN Alliance ​“Emis­sion-free elec­tri­fied maritime urban trans­port” - in short E2MUT aims to create ​“Green ener­gies for blue trans­porta­tion.” The aim of the alliance is to promote the devel­op­ment and market intro­duc­tion of emis­sion-free urban mobility solu­tions on the water.

A special focus is on the ​“urban” sector, i.e. trans­port within cities and between neigh­bouring cities and resi­den­tial areas. Increasing urban­i­sa­tion and indi­vidual traffic are leading to congested roads in urban areas. This trend must be coun­tered by inte­grating water­ways and, in the process, elim­i­nating a large part of the pollu­tant and noise emis­sions through emis­sion-free propul­sion systems based on batteries and hydrogen.

The project part­ners

This research project is an alliance of 14 part­ners: 12 industry compa­nies, nine of which are SMEs, and two research insti­tu­tions. The majority of the German alliance part­ners are concen­trated in the Rostock area. In addi­tion, there is one partner each from Stral­sund, Hamburg (ar engi­neers) and Munich. The alliance thus repre­sents a broad, compe­tence spec­trum of the maritime industry and envi­ron­men­tally friendly propul­sion systems for maritime appli­ca­tions.

The approach

Successful imple­men­ta­tion of emis­sion-free elec­tro­mo­bility requires an inte­grated inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approach to the devel­op­ment of inno­v­a­tive solu­tions. To this end, the E2MUT research project as a system is divided into three fields of compe­tence:

• Mobility and infra­struc­ture
• Propul­sion systems and energy supply
• Elec­tric vessels

In the elec­tric vessel field, ar engi­neers GmbH is researching the applic­a­bility of adap­tive and instru­mented CFRP foils for the contin­uous reduc­tion of hull resis­tance.

In ship­building, hydro­foils are connected to the hull under­water and generate a dynamic lift at increasing speed, which lifts the hull out of the water. This addi­tional lift enables the vessel to operate much more effi­ciently at higher speeds.

The instru­men­ta­tion of the foils aims to collect dedi­cated input data for future devel­op­ment projects to enable long-term opti­mi­sa­tion of foil struc­tures and contin­uous struc­tural moni­toring.

Our know-how

The following compe­tences at ar engi­neers are being used and further devel­oped in this research project:

• Concep­tual design and devel­op­ment of foil systems for hydro­foils
• CAD design of high-perfor­mance light­weight struc­tures
• Design, calcu­la­tion and opti­mi­sa­tion of highly stressed composite struc­tures using Ansys soft­ware
• Devel­op­ment of an algo­rithm for the calcu­la­tion of hydro­dy­namic loads of hydro­foils using the Python program­ming language
• Devel­op­ment of algo­rithms for contin­uous struc­tural moni­toring of sensor-inte­grated composite compo­nents

Our way

Our holistic view of the project means we see where the poten­tial of light­weight design or compo­nent opti­mi­sa­tion can be realised and also ensures the best possible coor­di­na­tion of the project part­ners. Through the adept use and further devel­op­ment of tools and methods we are able to make an impor­tant contri­bu­tion to achieving the project’s objec­tives.