The research on the dynamics analysis-based energy-saving technology is significant to reduce ship energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The adoption of dynamics analysis theory and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approaches can achieve the optimal design and energy efficiency improvement of the ship. This research focuses on the ship energy efficiency improvement technology through CFD-based dynamics analysis, including the hull optimization design, drag reduction technology, navigation state optimization, efficient propulsion devices, energy-saving equipment, and the coupled dynamics analysis for comprehensive performance optimization. The current research and application status of ship performance optimization based on CFD approaches for energy-efficient shipping are systematically analyzed. On this basis, the challenges and problems in the application of the CFD-based energy-saving technology are discussed, and the future research works are proposed, aiming to provide references for the development of ship energy-saving technology based on CFD approaches. The analysis results show that the adoption of CFD-based dynamics analysis methods can effectively optimize the ship dynamics performance, thus reducing ship energy consumption and pollution gas emissions. In the future, the CFD-based coupled dynamics analysis should be further studied to achieve the overall performance optimization of the integrated ship-engine-propeller-appendages system under the influence of multiple complex factors, to continuously improve the ship energy efficiency, thus promoting the low-carbon development of the shipping industry.

Optimization of ship energy efficiency is an efficient measure to decrease fuel usage and emissions in the shipping industry. The accurate prediction model of ship energy usage is the basis to achieve optimization of ship energy efficiency. This study investigates the sequential properties of the actual voyage data from a VLOC. On this basis, a model for predicting ship energy consumption is established by adopting a LSTM neural network that has better prediction performance for sequential datasets. To further enhance the performance of the established LSTM-based model, the network structures and hyperparameters are optimized by using Genetic Algorithm. Lastly, the application analysis is conducted to validate the established GA-LSTM-based model for ship fuel usage prediction. The established model for ship energy usage shows a significant improvement in prediction accuracy, compared to the original LSTM-based model. Meanwhile, the developed prediction model is more accurate than the existing BP, SVR, and ARIMA-based energy consumption models. The prediction errors for the ship's operational energy efficiency adopting the established GA-LSTM-based model can reach as low as 0.29%. Therefore, the established model can effectively predict the ship fuel usage under different conditions, which is essential for the optimization and improvement of ship energy efficiency.

Wing-diesel engine-powered hybrid ships can effectively reduce fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions by using wind energy as the auxiliary driving power. The energy optimization management of the hybrid system can further improve the ship's energy efficiency. To achieve this purpose, it is significant to establish an effective energy consumption model for the energy optimization management of the hybrid system. Therefore, an energy consumption model is established based on the energy conversion analysis of the hybrid power system in this paper. This model can effectively describe the energy consumption of the hybrid ship under different navigational environmental conditions. Then, a joint optimization method of the wing attack angle and of the sailing speed for the hybrid ship is proposed by adopting a swarm intelligence optimization algorithm, in order to reduce energy consumption and CO₂ emissions of the hybrid ship under different navigational environmental conditions. Finally, the energy consumption optimization potentials by adopting the hybrid power system and the proposed joint optimization method are analyzed. The results show that the energy consumption and CO₂ emissions along a typical route can be reduced by about 4.5%. This study provides an important basis for future practical operations of wing-diesel engine-powered hybrid ships.

It is of significant importance to optimize the energy consumption of ships in order to improve economy and reduce CO₂ emissions. However, the energy use of ships is affected by a series of navigational environmental parameters, which have certain spatial and temporal differences and variability. Therefore, the dynamic collaborative optimization method of sailing route and speed, which fully considers the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of those factors, is of great importance. In this paper, the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of the environmental factors and their related ship energy consumption profiles are first analyzed. Subsequently, a ship energy consumption model considering various environmental factors is established to realize the prediction of energy use of ships within the navigation region. Then, a novel dynamic collaborative optimization algorithm, which adopts the Model Predictive Control (MPC) strategy and swarm intelligence algorithm, is proposed, to further improve the ship's energy consumption optimization. Finally, a case study is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that the newly developed dynamic collaborative optimization method, which fully considers the continuously time-varying characteristics of environmental and operational parameters, could effectively reduce the energy consumption in comparison to the original operational mode. In addition, the adoption of the MPC strategy produces better performance results compared to the optimization method without the MPC strategy.