USe of seakeeping simulation capabilities in the preliminary phase of the design of multihull vessels

Abstract

Seakeeping analysis is a fundamental part of the design process of a ship. Due to its complexity, seakeeping analysis is usually completed in a late stage of the design process. Although this approach can be successfully used for monohull vessels, it is not optimal in designing more innovative hull forms, due to the high degree of uncertainty of the seakeeping performances of these vessels. The recent interest in multihull vessels poses a problem to the naval architecture world as little is known about such hull forms and a limited number of design tools is available to analyze them. These concerns led to the development of the I-Marine Seakeeping Analysis Toolbox that aims to help students and naval architects alike understand the importance of seakeeping analysis and the seakeeping capabilities of multihull vessels. The Toolbox includes five different seakeeping programs suitable for the analysis of multihull vessels and is accessible through a web interface. The integrated nature of I-Marine strongly facilitates the usage of the programs, making it a great educational tool to learn seakeeping analysis without any previous programming knowledge.

(cont.) This thesis shows that a tool such as I-Marine could be effectively used in calculating the seakeeping capabilities of multihulls and successfully integrated in the preliminary design of a vessel, leading to numerous advantages such as a higher efficiency in the design process, a reduction in the risk of designing multihulls, and an expansion of the design envelope.