foresight


Future shipping combines the familiar and the unforeseen


Forecasts made 20 years ago based on trends couldn’t anticipate the scale of today’s container ships, or the depths of water in which offshore support vessels work, so how sure can we be about the shape of the next generation of ‘future ships’?


orecasting how technology will develop is really only successful if the future co-operates by remaining more or less the same or developing in a rather obvious, linear way. There were plenty of ‘future ship’ concepts being dreamt up two decades ago, so how close to the mark were their designers? Well, there aren’t as many ships being operated by a crew of six as they imagined, even though the computers, electronics and communications these concepts relied on have far outperformed the capabilities and functionalities predicted at the time.


F


The Flettner rotors, air lubricated hulls and fish-tail propulsion used by Wärtsilä’s water tanker are all familiar concepts which have awaited modern technology to fulfil their promise


Over the past 150 years or so advances in machinery,


electronics, communications,


automation and control may have made it possible to reduce crew complements from 250 down to just half a dozen, but removing those last six to create an unmanned ship is still a big step, as such a vessel’s reliability must be guaranteed. While technically feasible (Foresight, April 2011), the unmanned ship is still too costly a concept for a commercial enterprise, but is attractive for naval missions such as minesweeping or reconnaissance.


So what of today’s ‘future ship’ forecasts? There are still plenty of projects looking 20 years or so ahead, but one of the most interesting is Wärtsilä’s Shipping Scenarios 2030. Considering factors affecting the shape of ships to come, research, interviews and workshops led Wärtsilä’s team to identify two certainties and six key uncertainties.


Wärtsilä felt certain that shipping would remain an important part of the transportation matrix, and that fresh water would become a more valuable commodity. Uncertainties included factors such as trade and economic growth, and response to climate change and sustainability issues.


By analysing the uncertainties, the combinations of different outcomes yielded


Marine Electronics & Communications


three plausible scenarios: ‘Rough Seas’, ‘Yellow River’ and ‘Open Oceans’. Rough Seas envisages a tense world in which the scarcity of resources is predominant, while Yellow River sees China globally dominant economically, geopolitically and in shipping. Open Oceans is the happiest scenario and considers a strongly globalised world in which logistics is king.


If fresh water is to be traded, specialist carriers will emerge. Wärtsilä favours a design similar to conventional Suezmax oil tankers but without


the restrictions imposed by a


hazardous cargo. The accommodation can be positioned on top of the cargo tanks which can be constructed from composite materials rather than steel. Ballast-free designs and single hull construction are possible. With energy in short supply, it is no surprise that Wärtsilä’s tanker is equipped with Flettner rotors to supplement


keep an eye on the past as so many ideas have been thought of before – but not necessarily at an appropriate time. For example,


two


engineer inventors were working on remote control systems for unmanned ships in the US even longer ago than might be expected: Nikola Tesla demonstrated a wireless ship in New York in 1898, and John Hays Hammond’s Gyrad system showed its potential by controlling an unmanned yacht on a 120-mile round trip in 1914. It may be a while before a technology’s time finally arrives. Flettner rotors have never been more attractive than they are today: for example as well as being used in Wärtsilä’s project; four large rotors can be found on Enercon’s E-Ship 1, employed for transporting wind turbine components.


its main propulsion


system, which in turn employs a ‘fishtail’ system equipped with two large horizontal fins that move up and down to provide forward thrust. Frictional resistance is minimised by an air lubricated hull.


This all assumes, of course, that the future behaves. However, the Open Oceans scenario would harness state-of-the-art electronics to remotely control high-tech unmanned vessels by satellite


link, harvesting algae from large floating basins in the ocean to be processed into clean bio-fuels. Any consideration of


future ships should


On its first voyage in 1925, Anton Flettner’s rotor ship Buckau demonstrated that the Magnus effect could be harnessed for marine propulsion, but the energy needed to spin the rotors might just as well have been used to drive a propeller. Nobody at the time could have foreseen that Flettner had invented a wind propulsion system that would turn out to be inherently much more suitable for computer control than more traditional sail systems.


Wärtsilä has invited interested parties to share their views, challenge Wärtsilä’s, and provide feedback about its shipping scenarios at: www.wartsila.com/shippingscenarios


www.marinemec.com


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