The increasing economic cost and environmental impact of maritime transportation necessitate the reduction of fossil fuel consumption of ocean-going cargo ships. Although fundamental ship propulsion system theory is well-known and is at a mature stage of development, there is still an enormous variety in the assessment methodology of (environmental) transport performance of ships. Furthermore, calibration of ship propulsion system model parameters with testbed, towing tank and full-scale measurement data is rare, as these measurements are both difficult and expensive. Finally, the effects of different power management strategies on the ultimate energy conversion effectiveness of typical cargo ships have rarely been investigated systematically. In this paper these three issues are discussed, addressed and solved for a representative benchmark chemical tanker. This ship was chosen to investigate the so-called energy conversion effectiveness under various propulsion control and electric power generation modes, as ample real ship data is available. The transport performance assessment of the ship's power plant is generalised for hybrid arrangements with either Power-Take-Off or Power-Take-In. The results show that an optimal combination of propulsion control, power management and voyage planning will further reduce the global fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions produced by the shipping industry.

Mean value diesel engine models are widely used since they focus on the main engine performance and can operate on a time scale that is longer than one revolution, and as a consequence use time steps that are much longer than crank-angle models. Mean Value First Principle (MVFP) models are not primarily intended for engine development but are used for systems studies that are become more important for engine users. In this paper two new variants of Seiliger processes, which characterize the engine in-cylinder process with finite stages are investigated, in particular their ability to correctly model the heat release by a finite number of combustion parameters. MAN 4L20/27 engine measurements are used and conclusions were drawn which Seiliger variant should be used and how to model the combustion shape for more engines. Then expressions to calculate the combustion parameters have been obtained by using a multivariable regression fitting method. The mean value diesel engine model has been corrected and applied to the simulation of a ship propulsion system which contains a modern MAN 18V32/40 diesel engine in its preliminary design stage and the simulation results have shown the capability of the integration of MVFP model into a larger system.