About us

Propulsion Dynamics Inc. was founded in 2002 by Torben Munk, a naval architect and ship technical director with more than 40 years professional experience in the industry.

Propulsion Dynamics became the first company to offer outsourcing of Hull and Propeller Performance Monitoring as a turnkey service.

In 1990 Torben Munk, together with a computer scientist, began investigating and developing advanced methods of ship hydrodamics that took into account vessel design, sea trial data and ship performance data.

There are 3 areas of performance analysis that make our services unique and robust:

• In CASPER,the speed through water is calculated from propeller revolutions, power delivered to the propeller and propeller design whereas onboard speed logs and GPS are unable to measure speed through water.

• Full hydrodynamic correction of heavy sea states. Most contemporary performance monitoring systems are unable to correct for heavy weather encountered by the ship in operation.

• Algorithms for the influence of hull and propeller roughness and fouling on speed losses and increased in bunker costs.

The innovative analysis is called the CASPER© (Computerized Analysis of Ship Performance). The benefits of this new method of analysis were radical and dramatic for the first ship owners who signed up for the CASPER program in 2003. Ships enrolled in the CASPER program significantly improved fuel efficiency within the first year. Today, our first containership customer is still with us with the entire fleet of 70 ships in our program, attaining continuous improvement of vessel efficiency and reduction of bunker consumption.

Propulsion Dynamics helped foster a global awareness of the importance of hull and propeller resistance as a Key Performance Indicator in fuel conservation and emission reduction programs. The term 'Hull and Propeller Performance Monitoring" is now one of the key measures to reduce fuel consumption and reduce emissions in the (IMO) Ship Energy Efficiency Management Plan as well as Interanko's TEMP.

Propulsion Dynamics is involved in various activities in the industry:

• Intertanko - Performance Monitoring Working Group
• IMO Advisory Council – Nat’l Association of Corrosion Engineers (NGO) Hull Maintenance
• SNAME Ship Efficiency and Climate Change Panel

Propulsion Dynamics has no affiliation with any contractors, institutions or coating suppliers, assuring our customers of unbiased technical opinions. The company is privately held and fully independent. In this way, our efforts are dedicated totally to hull and propeller performance analysis and delivering value added services to our customers.

Propulsion Dynamics has commercial offices in Long Beach, California and technical headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Propulsion Dynamics has over 2,500 ship-years of ship operations and hydrodamic analysis of ocean going vessels.