Future-proof ship pipe routing: Navigating the energy transition

Berend Markhorst*, Joost Berkhout, Alessandro Zocca, Jeroen Pruyn, Rob van der Mei

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Ship pipe route design is often overlooked in the context of the energy transition, although it is a crucial driver for design time and costs. Motivated by this, we propose a mathematical approach for modeling uncertainty in pipe routing with deterministic optimization, stochastic programming, and robust optimization. The uncertainty entails not knowing which type of fuel will be used in the ship's future. All three models are based on state-of-the-art integer linear programming models for the Stochastic Steiner Forest Problem and adjusted to the maritime domain using specific constraints for pipe routing. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for uncertainty in ship pipe routing, demonstrating cost reductions of up to 22% based on experiments with artificial and realistic data. Our methods enable engineers to explore different levels of preparedness for the energy transition with minimal effort during the early design phase.

Original languageEnglish
Article number120113
Pages (from-to)1-14
Number of pages14
JournalOcean Engineering
Volume319
Early online date30 Dec 2024
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 30 Dec 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s)

Keywords

  • Energy transition
  • Pipe routing
  • Robust optimization
  • Ship design
  • Stochastic programming
  • Stochastic Steiner forest

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