POTENTIAL FOR IMPROVEMENT OF SHIP LIFECYCLE COSTS THROUGH DEVIATION FROM STANDARD SHIP DESIGNS AND PRACTICES

摘要

A majority of ship newbuildings are standard designs developed primarily by shipyards in order to serve a multitude of customers and services. This leads to designs which are relatively cheap to build because of repetition, standardization of dimensions and a uniform build process. Tanker owner Teekay has investigated whether it would be possible to improve tanker performance, in particular their fuel economy, by designs that are better adapted to owners requirements. Significant improvements in fuel economy, of 25 to 30%, were indeed found possible.In the wake of new EEDI requirements, as well as fuel price increases, yards have since developed Green or ECO designs with improved fuel economy. The procedure developed by BMT for the Teekay project reduced the time and cost of evaluating the performance of alternative ship deadweight and main dimension combinations. This procedure has been used to evaluate the potential for further design improvements over typical recent ECO oil tanker designs.The calculated lifetime cost savings are, dependent on bunker price assumptions, in the order of 7 to 16 million USD. The extra newbuilding costs required to obtain them have been estimated to be between 1 and 1.5 million USD. Owner’s, charterers and shipyards would thus seem well advised to consider further tanker design developments beforeordering any new ships.