Wind Propulsion Systems

Argo Engineering staff have extensive design and build experience in the super sailing sector and bring this to the Windship industry. Our understanding of aerodynamics, structures and a variety of materials allows us to integrate wind propulsion into new vessels and legacy fleets. It was with this experience that we were tasked to provide the sole engineering support to a large global green shipping company with targets to reduce fuel costs by 20% using high tech sails. Using our understanding of aerodynamics and lightweight structures we are continuing to help our client develop new concepts for shipping using renewable engineering.

The push to decarbonise shipping is a difficult problem and current proposals to add wind propulsion to existing tankers and containerships can only solve a proportion of the problem – the industry will need to go further. At Argo Engineering we are constantly looking for innovative solutions to these kinds of problems. Using our knowledge of modern square-rigs and multihulls Argo have undertaken a preliminary internal design study on a ‘DynaProa’ – our own original idea. To cope with the sustainable future of shipping, we are considering many types of zero-emissions sail-powered transport including passenger versions and car carriers. Perhaps the future includes this fast, efficient design - light with a symmetrical fore-aft and burning no fossil fuels. We would also able to carry sufficient battery or hydrogen tank capacity to operate at the same speed on zero wind days – a perpetual problem for wind-based solutions! With our proven history of large rig design & practical build solutions, we are continuing our active research into systems optimisation whilst performing principal calculations and Finite Element Analysis to support validation.