{"id":3952,"date":"2015-06-18T14:35:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T13:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mercator.nfdtesting.uk\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/2015\/06\/18\/whale-tail-wave-foil-shows-promise\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T22:31:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T21:31:23","slug":"whale-tail-wave-foil-shows-promise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/news\/propulsion\/whale-tail-wave-foil-shows-promise\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Whale tail\u2019 wave foil shows promise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In tests using a 1:16.57 ship model, the device \u2013 two wings or fins that move up and down as waves hit the vessel, propelling it forward \u2013 has been shown to reduce resistance by 9-17% at wave heights of 3m and under. Heaving and pitching were also reduced by a similar amount.<\/p>\n<p>Project leader Eirik B\u00f8ckmann, a postdoctoral fellow at the department of marine technology at NTNU, anticipated that hull optimisation for the foils would improve performance further. He added that further testing and examination of market demand is required, as well as establishing the resilience of the fins and their impact on ship stability if damaged.<\/p>\n<p>The project is supported by Rolls-Royce (a long-term collaborator with NTNU and Marintek), Seaspeed Marine Consulting and fuel efficiency and carbon reduction specialist MOST. Alastair Sim, a technologist at Rolls-Royce\u2019s Strategic Research Centre, noted that the wave foil is similar to the company\u2019s existing roll stabilisers.<\/p>\n<p>The project began in 2013. Testing in Marintek\u2019s 200m-long tank uses cameras and advanced measuring equipment to show how the model moves, resistance against the model and how changes affect it. Since the towing tank opened at the Trondheim site in 1939 it has hosted tests on 3,000 ship models and 1,250 propellers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new whale tail-shaped wave foil could harness wave energy to reduce fuel consumption for propulsion, if initial results from tests at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) at Marintek\u2019s towing tank are confirmed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":3953,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-3952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-propulsion"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3954,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3952\/revisions\/3954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3952"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorship.com\/propulsion-and-future-fuels-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=3952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}