In the research areas of shipping and hydrodynamics, we have many projects focused on green technologies and new ways to reduce carbon emissions in the future. However, sharing details about these projects with the public and the larger research community can sometimes be challenging, as design and performance data for commercial ships usually must be kept private. The SOBC-1 is an answer to this challenge.
About the ship
As the name suggests, the hull of SOBC-1 is designed as a dry bulk carrier, with an overall length of 200 m and a total displacement of roughly 50,000 tons. Other design parameters can be found in the data that is made available for download (see below). Three main reasons motivated the choice of this ship type: First, a large part of the global fleet consists of dry bulk carriers, with roughly 12,000 ships in total. Second, due to the combination of relatively low speed and good stability, it is believed that it may be a ship type that is particularly suitable for green technologies such as wind propulsion. Third, other open ship geometries already cover other common ship types, such as the KCS for container ships and the KVLCC2 for tankers.
The data available
The data for SOBC-1 is currently shared in an open repository hosted on GitHub. To access it, follow the link below. The best approach to get a complete overview of the available data is to browse the GitHub repository directly. We plan to add new data and reports when new experiments are conducted. A non-exhaustive list is given below to give an impression of the data available:
- Geometry of the hull, rudder and propeller supplied as CAD models
- Calm water characteristics from experiments, consisting of open water data for the propeller, resistance data for the hull, and self-propulsion results.
- To come: data from manoeuvring tests in both calm water and in waves. The experiments have been conducted, and the results are currently being processed and prepared for public release. As soon as they are ready.
Future plans
SOBC-1 is used as a case study ship in several ongoing research projects, such as KSP WIND, and is also planned to be used in future projects. This site will be updated with new results when they are ready.
Sign up for the SOBC-1 newsletter
If you want to be updated, we invite you to sign up for our SOBC-1 newsletter below. We will use your e-mail address to notify you whenever there is news to share about the SOBC-1 dataset.
Terms and conditions
The data is shared with certain restrictions on how it can be used, specified in a “Data Use Agreement” (DUA). The agreement can be found directly on the GitHub repository or by following the link below. Please read this agreement carefully before using the data. After you have read the DUA, you can follow a new link directly to the repository with the data.
