Spaera

Case studies

Delivered programmes

The VME was not assembled from components. It was built, project by project, through delivered R&D programmes with leading academic, class and industry partners, each one providing further validation evidence.

01CMDC4 · 2024 to 2025 · £1.1m programme

Ship behaviour under wind propulsion, proven in the tank

Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition R4 — with the University of Southampton, Scotline, Houlder, the Wolfson Unit and Lloyd’s Register

A working coastal cargo vessel was digitally twinned, then a 1:32 scale model was run through 90+ self-propelled tests at the Boldrewood towing tank, with a steerable fan applying wind propulsion forces so their hydrodynamic consequences could be isolated.

Side force induces leeway, leeway demands rudder, and holding course can require up to 50% more power at large rudder angles. Modelling that chain is the difference between a device’s brochure figure and its net saving.

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02SSAF · 2024 to 2025 · £0.3m programme

Powertrains and future fuels, optimised over real voyages

Smart Shipping Acceleration Fund — with University College London, Seabird Technologies and Scotline

Over 9,600 powertrain permutations were simulated across vessels, voyages and control strategies, on voyage-realistic data the VME generated from a real vessel’s movements.

Peak fuel efficiency and peak economic value turned out to be different answers: the most valuable powertrain undersizes the fuel cell and lets the battery carry the peaks.

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03CMDC6 · 2025 to 2026 · £0.6m programme

Industrialising fidelity, and finding what convention cannot see

Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition R6 — with the University of Southampton, Houlder and Scotline

A staged, automated six degree of freedom CFD process that converges on a force-balanced, course-holding vessel in a single orchestrated run, cutting per-vessel CFD cost by around two-thirds.

Characterising the propeller in angled inflow — the state a wind-assisted vessel actually sails in — revealed efficiency effects of up to 8% on a conventional stern and 12% on a podded arrangement.

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Validation

What the programmes add up to

Every layer of the VME has been validated against physical evidence: 90+ towing tank runs across speeds, leeway and rudder angles; scale CFD correlated against experiment; full-scale CFD correlated against shipyard sea trial data; instrumented in-service vessels validating the weather layer on real routes; powertrain models built on manufacturer performance maps; and independent cross-checks against third-party seakeeping codes. Resistance is validated to within 5% of benchmark data, self-propulsion within 10%, and propeller templates within 5% of published benchmarks, with model uncertainty quantified so it is known when a 1 to 2% effect is genuinely resolvable. Beyond the public programmes, two customer-backed measurement campaigns have extended the correlation base on operating vessels, and 45 vessels and five energy saving technologies have now been comprehensively modelled.

90+

towing tank runs across speeds, leeway and rudder angles

<5%

validated resistance accuracy against benchmark model scale data

3/3

public programmes delivered on time and on budget

30 yrs

of hindcast weather behind every route simulated

45

vessels comprehensively modelled, with five energy saving technologies

Three public programmes. Three on-time, on-budget deliveries. One platform.

How the VME works

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