Sailing speed optimization for container ships in a liner shipping network

This paper first calibrates the bunker consumption – sailing speed relation for container ships using historical operating data from a global liner shipping company. It proceeds to investigate the optimal sailing speed of container ships on each leg of each ship route in a liner shipping network while considering transshipment and container routing. This problem is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model. In view of the convexity, non-negativity, and univariate properties of the bunker consumption function, an efficient outer-approximation method is proposed to obtain an ε-optimal solution with a predetermined optimality tolerance level ε. The proposed model and algorithm is applied to a real case study for a global liner shipping company.

► Calibrate bunker consumption – sailing speed function. ► Model the sailing speed optimization problem with container routing. ► Develop an exact and efficient outer-approximation algorithm.