Fuel saving-oriented 3D dynamic programming for weather routing applications

The paper presents a ship weather routing method to minimize fuel consumption starting from meteo-marine forecasting data. For each route segment, fuel oil consumption is evaluated by a steady state model of the propulsion system, taking into account the weather conditions influence on the hull hydrodynamic resistance. Waves and wind data are estimated for each geographical position at every time step, by interpolating into 3-dimensional (i.e. latitude, longitude and time) weather forecasting maps. A 3D dynamic programming code is used to optimize ship route and speed profile, according to minimum fuel consumption criterion. Results and discussion of the proposed method are presented for a merchant ship application.