Armada Technologies (Armada) was awarded a grant from the UK Government’s Transport Research and Innovation (Trig21) funding which went toward the capital raised in support of the design, fabrication & testing of their patented air lubrication system.
The 2020 T-TRIG Program has been designed to address the challenges that decarbonisation and the COVID-19 pandemic are presenting to the UK’s transport industry. Armada was one of 12 companies chosen under the decarbonisation category.
Armada’s ‘passive air lubrication system’, PALS Mk3, uses the forward motion of the ship to drive carefully designed venturi’s that create an optimum fluid/air mixture that is deployed under the ship.
During testing, PALS introduced aerated water to simulated boundary layer. Under realistic ferry operating conditions average ‘on plate’ > 10% drag reduction was recorded with much higher drag reductions measured in other tests.
Additionally, a ‘sweet spot’ was achieved where hydrodynamic phenomena are balanced to match operating conditions.
The net result showed that complete passive aeration of PALS is achievable over a wide range of speed and depth variables. This offers the vessel owner genuine fuel savings in excess of those offered by earlier, pioneer ALS technologies. Read more at https://cp.catapult.org.uk/news/winners-announced-for-the-seventh-year-of-t-trig/