Specialisation Practitioner → Specialist
Energy-Saving Devices in Depth
Three device families taken apart, and the proof that applies to all of them: what each one actually recovers, what it quietly costs to run, and how to show that it worked.
- Courses
- 4
- Lessons
- 32
- Time
- About 5 hours
- Price
- €549+ VAT
- Assumed knowledge
- Our free course Energy-Saving Technologies is the ideal on-ramp: it surveys every kind of efficiency measure in one sitting, and this sequence then engineers three device families in depth before teaching the proof method that applies to all of them. Ship Resistance Fundamentals supplies the calm-water resistance components that air lubrication and the hull-side devices attack. All four courses use the propulsive chain: Wind-Assisted Propulsion Engineering at the level the three propeller lessons in Naval Architecture for Performance teach it; Hydrodynamic Energy-Saving Devices and Air Lubrication at the level of our Propeller & Propulsion sequence, or equivalent comfort with open-water coefficients, wake fraction and thrust deduction; and Proving a Device Works treats that sequence, with our courses ISO 15016 & Speed Trials and ISO 19030: Measuring Hull & Propeller Performance, as companions rather than prerequisites. The mathematics is algebra and trigonometry on a scientific calculator: powers, roots and natural logarithms, and in the fourth course a standard error and a normal quantile. One lesson writes down an integral, in lifting-line theory, and then uses only its standard result.
€549 + VAT for the sequence
The 4 paid courses cost €716 bought one at a time; as a specialisation they are €549, a saving of €167 (23%).
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You own this specialisation. Every course in it is open to you.
Energy-saving devices are sold in percentages and bought on faith. This sequence replaces both with engineering. It takes the three families that carry the largest claims (wind assistance, hydrodynamic devices around the propeller and on the hull, and air lubrication) and treats each as a machine with a physical mechanism, a design space and a bill: a rotor sail has to be spun, an air layer has to be compressed, a pre-swirl duct has to survive a wake field it was never optimised for. The last course is the one the industry most needs and least often runs: how to establish that a device saved anything at all, from CFD through the tank and the sea trial to the only evidence a charterer eventually believes, which is service data from a campaign sized in advance to resolve the saving, compared against the right counterfactual.
What you'll learn
- Resolve an apparent wind into the driving and side forces a wing or rotor produces, and turn the driving force into engine kilowatts through the propulsive chain
- Use lifting-line theory to price the induced drag of the aspect ratio a deck allows, and say what air draught, bridge visibility and cargo access leave a given sail plan able to deliver
- Deduct a Flettner rotor's own drive power before quoting any saving, size the air a suction wing's fan must move, and say why its fan power is the number a supplier still owes you
- Size each of a propeller's loss channels in kilowatts, match each stern device to the channel it spends, test a hull-side device against the ship's Froude number and resistance split, and explain why two devices never simply add
- Explain the three regimes of air lubrication and the critical air flux at which a persistent layer forms, size the compressor with a compressible-flow formula, and subtract its load from the right quantity to reach a net saving
- Plan and audit a sea trial to the ITTC wind-propulsion procedure, and state precisely what its result does and does not prove
- Work out how many days of in-service data are needed to resolve a three per cent saving, and design the comparison that resolves it
The sequence
Each course stands alone; this order is the order the knowledge builds.
How the courses build on each other
The order runs from the device that is most visible to the one that is hardest to see, and ends with the question all three raise. Wind-Assisted Propulsion Engineering comes first because its physics is a wing in air rather than anything in the water: its own velocity triangle, its own induced drag, and its own consequences for heel, leeway and rudder. Hydrodynamic Energy-Saving Devices then works inside the propeller's own loss budget, a large and fixed pot in which every stern device competes for the same small reachable share, and takes in the hull-side devices that work on resistance instead. Air Lubrication attacks the largest single resistance component with the most demanding auxiliary plant, and is the clearest case of a technology whose gross figure and net figure are different numbers. Proving a Device Works closes the sequence because by then you have three sets of claims to test, and because the evidence problem is the same in all three cases. One boundary is deliberate: Energy-Saving Technologies, which is free, owns the survey, including what this sequence does not engineer (machinery measures and waste-heat recovery, shore power, and the operational measures), and this sequence starts where it stops rather than repeating it. The calm-water resistance components themselves belong to Ship Resistance Fundamentals, and the propeller loss budget the second course opens is built on the propulsive chain taught in our Propeller & Propulsion sequence.
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Paid Practitioner
Wind-Assisted Propulsion Engineering
What a rotor, wing, suction wing or kite is actually worth on a real ship: the aerodynamics that sets the force, the four penalties the hull and the engine take back out of it, and the route and compliance arithmetic that decides whether any of it is ever repaid.
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Paid Practitioner
Hydrodynamic Energy-Saving Devices
The engineering behind ducts, pre-swirl stators, boss cap fins, end-plated blades, rudder bulbs and stern interceptors: which loss each one attacks, how many kilowatts of that loss your ship actually has, and which way the model test behind the quoted percentage is likely to have erred.
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Paid Practitioner
Air Lubrication
The energy-saving family with the largest physical prize and the widest gap between what is claimed and what has been verified: what actually happens when you blow air under a flat bottom, what the compressor costs to feed it, and how much of a laboratory drag reduction survives the journey to a ship's fuel bill.
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Paid Specialist
Proving a Device Works
How to establish what an energy-saving device actually saves: the four counterfactuals and the confound that attacks each one, what a CFD run, a tank test and a sea trial can each honestly establish, the in-service designs that survive a fouling hull, the arithmetic that says how long a monitoring campaign has to run, and the guarantee wording that can be adjudicated instead of argued.
The specialisation certificate
Every course above ends in a graded final exam and a certificate. Hold the certificate for every course, and a capstone project unlocks: one scenario that draws on the whole sequence, marked on our server. Pass it and you get a second, separate certificate for the specialisation itself, naming every course it comprises: its own number, verifiable the same way.
Who teaches this
Common questions
Is this not the same ground as the free Energy-Saving Technologies course?
It is the same map at a different scale. The free course answers what the families are and how to be sceptical about a brochure, in eight lessons. This sequence answers how each one works, what governs the size of its gain, what it costs to operate, and how to test it, in thirty-two. If the free course leaves you able to ask a vendor the right question, this one leaves you able to check the answer.
Does it cover every device on the market?
No, and it says so. It engineers three families in depth rather than cataloguing thirty in outline, and it teaches the loss budget and the proof method that let you place a device it has never heard of. New devices appear every year; the physics they have to obey does not.
Will it tell me whether to fit one to my ship?
It will tell you what the answer depends on, and give you the arithmetic: the route, the draught profile, the operating speed, the fuel price, the compliance value of the saving, and the honest uncertainty on the saving itself. The decision is yours and it is ship-specific. What the sequence is firm about is that a decision taken on a brochure percentage is not a decision.
What does the capstone test?
One in-service trial of a pair of rotor sails, constructed for the exercise and marked on our server. You reduce its daily log to a net saving after the rotors' own power bill, test whether the saving is real, show why splitting the trial in time hides it, and work out how long the trial needed to be. A last part nets an air lubrication offer for the same ship against its compressors' fuel. It draws chiefly on Proving a Device Works, with the wind course's power bill and the air lubrication course's compressor bill; the hydrodynamic course is tested in its own final exam.