Michelin Puts Puffy Sails on Cargo Ships

Re:Michelin Puts Puffy Sails on Cargo Ships by barbegal on Sunday June 27, 2021 @07:44AM (#27650765)

The 15 in operation are not the puffy sails that the headline is talking about. They are a rotor design by a different manufacturer. The rotor style sails can save about 10 to 20% of a ship's fuel https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/Rotors_...

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Re:Michelin Puts Puffy Sails on Cargo Ships by briefcomment on Sunday June 27, 2021 @11:43AM (#27652456)

Found this awesome simple demonstration of Flettner rotors.[1]

One question I have is, how would this work with a sort of semi-circle fan version, where the blades retract when they start getting pushed into the wind. This could theoretically have the rotor turn off of just wind power instead of external power. Here's a crude drawing lol [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsGin7CFaF8

[2] http://draw.to/D47BxHT

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Re:Michelin Puts Puffy Sails on Cargo Ships by whatever1 on Sunday June 27, 2021 @10:43AM (#27651950)

Informative video on how it works [1]. Btw the 20% is an overly optimistic scenario.

[1] https://youtu.be/JhAlWHSez90

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Re:Michelin Puts Puffy Sails on Cargo Ships by diydsp on Sunday June 27, 2021 @09:18AM (#27651338)

that's a great paper! I love that it walks the reader through the math! I wish more did that! I often feel papers I read are just a little outside my abilities, but this one actually makes a person smarter!

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Re:Michelin Puts Puffy Sails on Cargo Ships by pigeonhole123 on Sunday June 27, 2021 @10:42AM (#27651946)

I think most papers do this mostly to prevent too much scrutiny of their calculations. Publish or perish etc

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