A Ship Weather Routing Optimization Method Incorporating Ship Seakeeping Model

Weather routing problem represents one of the most significant advancements in ship energy conservation and emission reduction. Weather routing problems involve a numerous spatio-temporal ship motion states and weather characteristics, leading to challenges in consumption estimation and computational efficiency. To address this, an improved weather-state lattice-based method is first proposed, taking into account the ship's seakeeping model, weather characteristics, and consumption optimal control. The optimal energy conservation trajectory considering ship course under discrete motion states and weather characteristics is determined by optimal control and defined as motion primitives. Furthermore, the graph search method combined with the motion primitives is applied to generate the optimal energy trajectories. The results indicate that the framework can generate lower-consumption trajectories by leveraging weather-induced forces. Moreover, incorporating the seakeeping model into the weather routing framework not only enhances the accuracy of energy consumption estimation but also significantly improves the manoeuvrability of the generated trajectories.