Sammendrag
The ship speed through water (STW) is a critical variable for evaluation of ship performance. With a cubic
relation to the expected shaft power, even small inaccuracies in measured STW amplifies to more considerable
inaccuracies in the expected shaft power. STW is traditionally measured using a speed log, more specifically by
the Doppler acoustic speed log principle. The stability and precision of this technique is however questionable,
particularly when ships are exposed to waves. For ships equipped with sensors and instrumentation for
measuring propulsion related data, the STW can be estimated from in-service measurements on the propeller
shaft. An accuracy of this STW estimate similar to the speed log will increase the overall confidence in the
ship performance evaluation. In this paper we study the uncertainty in the estimated STW using propeller
loading measurements, and identify the most critical components of ship instrumentation in order to achieve
an estimate of STW with sufficient accuracy. The uncertainty analysis includes a fixed pitch and controllable
pitch propeller, influence from including a thrust sensor and influence from waves on the expected uncertainty
in estimated STW. The uncertainty in estimated STW is found to be similar to the uncertainty provided by
manufacturers of Doppler speed logs. The propeller pitch angle is found to have a significant contribution to
the total uncertainty in STW. Including thrust measurements decreases the uncertainty in STW by 34%, and
the uncertainty is found to be not very much affected by the presence of waves.
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