Speed optimization for container ship fleet deployment considering fuel consumption

Abstract

In recent years, low energy consumption has become the common choice of economic development in the world. In order to control energy consumption, shipping line speed optimization has become strategically important. to reduce fuel consumption, this study optimizes the container ship fleet deployment problem by adopting the strategy of adjusting each leg of each route’s sailing speed. To calculate fuel consumption more accurately, both sailing speed and the shipʹs payload are considered. A multi‐objective mixed integer nonlinear programming model is established to optimize the allocation of liner routes with multiple ship types on multiple routes. A linear outer‐approximation algorithm and an improved piecewise linear approximation algorithm are used for linearization. If segments of an interval increase, the results will be more accurate but will take more time to compute. As fuel prices increase, to make trade‐offs among economic and environmental considerations, the shipping company is adopting the “adding ship and slow down its speed” strategy, which verifies the validity and applicability of the established model.