Estimation of Main Engine Power of Seagoing Ship at Preliminary Design Stage

Permanent growth of the container shipbuilding has led to the need of research – developing activities with references to design and ship building process. The requirements for the container vessels have been modified and changed compared with the ships built in the eighties of the past century. The ships capacity have been increased up to and even above 10 000 twenty feet containers (TEU) with the service speed above 25 knots. For such a giant sea going vessels with the overall length above 300 meters and draught above 10 meters the ship hull resistance characteristics have been modified. Those conditions bring to the situation where the propulsion power for the seagoing ships reached 80 MW. The estimation of the main engine power relation in the preliminary design stage is the main aim of the paper. The problem is such important as in that stage the most important design decisions with relatively low investment costs are determined. Moreover, the preliminary design stage distinguishes that the designer possesses just a few design parameters given by the ship owner of the future vessel. That is why the correct choice of the main engine power is difficult to determine. Determination of the main propulsion power impacts the electric and heat energy amount and the production way of both energy forms. The main engine equation has been determined based on the container ship’s parameters for the entire range of container vessels load capacity (TEU). The values of the design parameters have came from author’s data base for the contemporary container vessels.