Project Energy-saving air-Lubricated Ships (PELS)

For the majority of current ships sailing, the dominant part of the resistance is due to friction with the surrounding water, see the grey area in Figure 1. Addressing this part of a ship’s resistance means to improve ship’s performance on top of what is achievable by “traditional” optimisations, such as shape optimisation and minimising the radiated waves. By reducing the friction improvements of the ship’s efficiency of net up to 20% are deemed feasible. There is currently no other technique in naval architecture that can promise such savings.
A promising technique to address the frictional resistance of a ship is insulating the ship from the water by actively providing an air-layer between ship and water to drastically reduce the resistance of ships and thereby reduce propulsive power, fuel consumption and CO2 production.