http://www.canadiandefencereview.com/featured_content?blog/197
On the southwestern coast of Chile, there is a brand-new ROPAX in service called “Esperanza”. Operated by the Chilean ferry company Navimag, the 1800 lane-metre/244-passenger Esperanza sails north-south through the country’s famous ‘Patagonian Fjords’.
One look at the 150 metre-long Esperanza tells you that this is no ordinary ship. The traditional raked bow has been replaced with a scalloped ‘winged bow’ that resembles a shark’s open mouth, with a horizontal wing running along its lower third from one side of the ship to the other. In naval architect terms, this is a type of wave-piercing bow as it is designed to cut through waves rather than over them. But too many designs are called wave-piercing bows, and the Esperanza designers prefer to call this solution a winged bow.
The reason for this unusual bow is not whimsy. It is deliberately designed to give the Esperanza an exceptionally smooth, stable and energy-efficient ride off Chile’s Pacific coast. And this she does: According to formal review of the Esperanza, model testing showed that the winged bow eliminated slamming and greatly reduced motions and accelerations detrimental to cargo and passengers. And that this new type of hull saves over 20% of power, fuel consumption and GHG emissions. The winged bow contributes only part of this superior performance.
How does the Esperanza’s design achieve this? We’re not quite sure. The designers decline to elaborate in detail on how such performance was achieved, citing proprietary IP (intellectual property).
The designers are Naviform Consulting & Research Ltd. (NaviForm), a privately owned naval architectural firm based in Vancouver, B.C.
NaviForm’s insistence on security keeps their clients’ information secure in a world of industrial espionage and IP theft. “Your design will not end up with overseas owners, possibly resold to your competition,” NaviForm’s website promises. Meanwhile, because the Esperanza’s winged bow is a patented technology, the company’s website is telling the truth when it says, “Our solutions cannot be replicated.”
For the record, NaviForm now holds five different patents in USA and EU, with three more presently pending, covering such diverse design features as motion reducing winged bow, power reducing stern bulbs, river hulls that generate zero wake and shore erosion, or external structure reducing hull weight.
While we weren’t able to interview the owner for this article, he did steer CDR to retired NRC industrial technology advisor (ITA) Tony Edgar, who worked extensively with NaviForm in testing the winged bow some years ago.
Edgar’s assessment of NaviForm’s winged bow design, plus a National Research Council (NRC) research paper that sums up their efforts (“A flat wave-piercing bow concept for high speed monohulls”), play major roles in our explanation of this technology. In contrast to Naviform’s reticence, this NRC paper is freely available to the world just by entering its name into Google. (A sidebar accompanying this article will summarize this paper.)WHY A CHILEAN FERRY HAS A CANADIAN-DESIGNED WINGED BOW
Chile’s south Pacific coast is a long way from Vancouver. So why does a Chilean ferry have a winged bow? The answer is simple: It was the best solution for the job. The owners were clear: we did not select NaviForm design for looks. It was the hard numbers - the power lower by 20% and the capacity higher by 20% compared to all competing designs that made us select NaviForm new technology.
Aided by an innovative propulsion system built by Finland’s Wärtsilä, the ferry’s winged bow provides low fuel consumption, nimble handling, and comfortable carriage for the Esperanza’s passengers and crew. These qualities are precisely what Navimag was seeking in its new ferry.
We understand that the bow wings are shaped to generate inverse vertical force when moving through a wave, holding the bow nearly still and preventing it from raising and initiating pitching motion that would otherwise be followed by crashing into the next wave. This also eliminates slamming and the need for heavier structure in the bow. American Bureau of Shipping who classed Esperanza, agree.
Now that the Esperanza is in service, Navimag is very happy with its daring design choice. “This project required a non-conventional design,” said Navimag CEO Cesar Barrera. But success didn’t come easily: “Close collaboration was needed to ensure that the equipment ordered was dimensioned accordingly, and that both the operating and environmental performance met the high standards that we required,” he said. “We are very proud of the end result.”
“Our ability to support the design process together with NaviForm was very important to this project,” agreed Mark Keneford, Wärtsilä Canada’s General Manager of Marine Sales. “The design is innovative, and we were able to deliver the right propulsion solution for the vessel, with high efficiency, reliability, low fuel consumption, and lifecycle support as the key enablers.”
WHERE ARE CANADA’S WINGED BOWS?
The fact the Esperanza’s winged bow design has won positive reviews from Navimag begs the question: If NaviForm’s design works so well on Chilean, American and soon German and Norwegian ships, why isn’t it being used on Canadian vessels?
“NaviForm’s winged bow has been proven to make ship to be more power efficient in all conditions and more stable in waves,” Edgar told CDR. “It mitigates waves slamming into the ship during transit, thus increasing stability at high speeds while reducing fuel burn and seasickness. We’ve seen the proof in computer simulations, in towing tank tests using scale models, and now in the real world with the Esperanza.” Wait. Less power also means higher speed with the same power, and a platform that moves in waves less making its sensor and weapon systems more effective. Wouldn’t that be of interest of the navies? Obviously it should and NaviForm admits they are now working with a European design firm on such application.
So why isn’t such an efficient technology developed-in-Canada being employed on Canada’s new surface and supply ships? Tony Edgar blames this absence on the Canadian military’s preference for ‘tried-and-true’ technologies.
“We made presentations to the federal government, to no effect,” he said. “Even though NaviForm’s results are supported by the NRC, the people in charge don’t want to take what they see as risks. They’d rather go with an old technology already in use than a new one that works; even if the new technology is Canadian-developed, Canadian-funded, and now proven on actual ships. That’s what they did, and that’s why none of our government-backed ships have winged bows.”
It is likely too late for NaviForm’s winged bow to be added to the Canadian Navy’s new fleet of surface combatants and fleet supply ships. Whether or not it should have been added is a question for naval architects and the Royal Canadian Navy. Whether the winged bow should have been considered is another question entirely: Given the fact that taxpayer money helped fund the winged bow’s development and testing, surely this investment deserved consideration during the ships’ specification process?
From what CDR has learned, this wasn’t the case. And so, a maritime innovation that is helping the Esperanza speed smoothly through the Patagonian fjords, will not be helping the Royal Canadian Navy do the same off Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific Coasts.
“The federal government puts an awful lot of money into our shipyards, so why isn’t it making the same investment in Canadian naval innovations like NaviForm’s winged bow?” asked Tony Edgar. “If they’d taken the same attitude to innovative space technology, the Canadarm would never have been built.” NaviForm owner quips “perhaps in a few years our navy will buy this Canadian technology from the Germans”.
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