Artwork by Gil Mares ©2009

'Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought' - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

This brief history will describe how Propulsion Dynamics Inc. ('PDI') evolved from a challenging assignment given to a Naval Architect by a Danish Shipowner twelve years ago, into one of the most timely new services for improving profitability of ocean-going vessels.

Approximately 15 years ago, as a consultant, hired by a major Danish Shipowner, Mr. Torben Munk, was assigned to investigate why some of the vessels in a 40 ship pool were losing money, while others were returning a significant profit. At first glance the task seemed routine; namely, some ships probably carried heavier loads; others sailed through rougher weather; a few were older and had aging engines or worn propellers and some simply suffered from fouled hulls. However, drawing on his prior experience as the head of a model testing laboratory, Mr. Munk began to notice that the reduced speeds and higher fuel consumption were random among the ships and somewhat independent of the age, cargo load, date of last dry-docking.

Applying his deep scientific experience in theoretical Naval Architecture and practical Shipmanagement, Mr. Munk developed advanced methods of analysis, taking into account the vessel design, sea trial data and all of the observable parameters monitored onboard these ships. By combining theoretical statistical hydrodynamics and actual on-board observations he was able to determine the true speed through water and the results of this were surprisingly positive. The most immediate benefit of this technique was that he was able to calculate the speed and fuel penalties (due solely to fouling) of the hull and propeller for each vessel. This led to the further finding that a large portion of the fleet was experiencing an excessive loss of speed even though there was no major fouling.  In addition, many other ships with various hull coating systems experienced excessive fuel consumption in the range of 20% - 30% (to maintain design speed) even though the visible fouling was only minimal or considered ‘normal’ in some areas of the hull.

Not stopping there, Mr. Munk ordered various maintenance procedures in order to observe the before-and-after effect on speed / consumption performance. In some cases this was a simple cleaning of the entire hull with soft brushes, in other cases is was polishing the propeller. A full blasting of the hull in drydock was ordered for some older ships and then the best hull coatings that showed the least added resistance from his prior analysis was applied. The results of this helped to further perfect his methods of analysis, but more importantly, provided the Shipowner with significant improvements in profitability - for some vessels within the first year and for others the profitability over the next drydock cycle improved substantially. This also allowed the Shipowner to optimize hull cleanings and propeller polishing intervals based on the true service speed, voyage pattern and type of hull coating, rather than traditional Periodic Maintenance.

Together with a computer scientist, he continued to perfect the proprietary hydrodynamic techniques and created the (Computerized Analysis of Ship PERformance) Service Program. 'CASPER’® was well received with other European shipowners because of its simplicity in implementation and  improvements in profitability despite different ownership, age and operating variables.

In 2002, after 12 years as a technical director for two shipowners, Torben Munk brought his Danish technical know-how to the Maritime community by founding Propulsion Dynamics and offering the CASPER® Service Program. At that time, it was a radical idea that shipowners should share their performance data with an outside party and that he could evaluate that data better than the shipowner himself. When bunker fuel was only $180 per ton, PDI acquired its first customers. Today, with hundreds of ships in our program, we continue to grow and expand our technical offerings to shipowners.

CASPER® answers many prudent questions on the mind of today’s sophisticated shipowners, such as: When does it pay to polish the propeller? When does it pay to clean the hull? What is the true difference in performance between the various hull coatings? Should I use an ultra-costly coating system or a moderate price coating system.  Industry-wide, CASPER® is also calling the maritime industry to consider the effects of hull and propeller corrosion / fouling on emissions and has developed the first CO2 Operational Index that takes hull condition into account, along with speed and displacement.