High Speed Catamarans and Multihulls Liang Yun • Alan Bliault • Huan Zong Rong High Speed Catamarans and Multihulls Technology, Performance, and Applications Liang Yun Alan Bliault Marine Design and Research Institute Naval Architect of China Sola, Norway Shanghai, China Huan Zong Rong Marine Design and Research Institute of China Shanghai, China ISBN 978-1-4939-7889-2 ISBN 978-1-4939-7891-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7891-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018939425 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019 This work is subject to copyright. 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Preface A series of new variations of high-performance marine vessels (HPMVs) have been developed in the last half century, including improvements to planing monohull craft from the 1940s, hydrofoils from the 1950s, air cushion vehicles (ACVs) and surface effect ships from the 1960s, small-waterplane area twin hull (SWATH) craft and wing in ground-effect craft from the 1970s, high-speed catamarans from the 1980s, wave-piercing catamarans (WPCs) from the 1990s, and high-speed trimarans in the first decade of the twenty-first century to the present. The authors have prepared texts discussing ACVs and wing in ground effect craft prior to this volume that focusses on the fast multihull – the catamaran, trimaran and SWATH or semi-SWATH. The authors have been concerned with HPMVs for a long time. Professors Yun and Rong have more than 40 years’ experience at the Marine Design & Research Institute of China, Shanghai (MARIC). Professor Yun has been chairman of the HPMV Design subcommittee of the China Society of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering (CSNAME) for the last 20 years, as well as vice chairman of the organizing committee of the annual International HPMV Conference, Shanghai, China, since 1996. He has been involved in ACV development in China since the very first prototypes were constructed in Harbin in the late 1950s and has been involved to some extent in the design of many of the other vessel types treated here. Alan Bliault also started working in the ACV industry in its early days as a naval architect with Vosper Thornycroft but became involved in the offshore oil industry in the early 1980s and so has led a double life since that time, in order to maintain his connections with the world of fast marine craft while working for Shell as engineer, manager, and latterly internal auditor. Designers, scientists, and various organizations, commercial, military, and gov- ernmental, have dedicated resources particularly heavily in the last 50 years to find ways in which combinations of hull geometries, hydrofoils, and static or dynamic air cushions can be used to deliver high-speed vessels that can perform very challenging missions. This work continues and is increasingly driven by energy efficiency and environmental impact rather than simply the mission envelope defined by speed/ payload/range. v vi Preface This book takes a broad view of the multihull concept and its design. We go into some depth on the hydrodynamics of such vessels while also aiming to give the reader an appreciation of what it takes to create a multihull as a project, where the underwater configuration is the starting point. A naval architect or marine engineer will be sensitive to the need to strike a balance between the configuration selection based on service requirement and the consequences of that choice of vessel geomet- ric form for the structure, powering, motions, and total cost of ownership (TCO).1 Thus, this is a naval architecture book rather than simply a hydrodynamics text. For a more detailed treatment of hydrodynamics for such vessels, readers are referred to texts given in the references and listed in the resources section at the back of the book. University libraries should have access to printed or electronic versions. We will refer to subject matter covered in these other resources as we progress, taking a project delivery approach. Nevertheless, we present an overall approach to selecting and analyzing the form of a multihull vessel based on work at MARIC, where two of the authors have dedicated their careers to high-speed marine technology. This work in turn is linked throughout the text to research in Norway, the UK, Australia, and, more recently, the USA and further developed using the major project execution experience of author Bliault. We will follow a sequence that can be applied when working on a multihull project. The early part involves looking at options based on available statistical data or some fundamental analysis. Once a starting configuration (or range of examples) is established, the design and analysis cycle can start. To achieve an “optimum” result, you need to have your roadmap set up with the key decision points and core design limitations (including your specification for accept/reject decisions). Without such a roadmap, the design/configuration can easily go off on a tangent and result in one parameter being optimized but a vessel that does not meet an operator’s overall requirements. We spend some time discussing these decision points in a project timeline. A balanced project leads to resilient vessel operation and, with careful mainte- nance, to a vessel that can be sold for late-life operation, generally in the developing world or a less demanding environment. Many of the larger multihull ferries built in the 1990s remain in service under different ownership. We touch on this issue as well since TCO can be significantly enhanced if the write-off cost at the end of a project is minimized. Our main focus is the catamaran and trimaran for commercial service at medium and high speeds. Recent decades from the 1980s to the present (2018) have seen a significant market develop globally for passenger vessels, passenger and vehicle ferries (RoPax), and military logistics service as well as some special services for offshore wind farms. Two main inputs apply to these craft: the service envelope 1Total cost of ownership (TCO) is often referred to in large capital projects and includes the development cost, design and construction, commissioning and start-up, and operational costs, including decommissioning and disposal. Prior to investment it is important to assess this expen- diture stream to determine the present value of the overall investment. A marine vessel project taken end to end will include all these elements. Preface vii during its transit and terminal requirements whether quayside docking for ferries or offshore docking, and station keeping for offshore vessels. This book has evolved a great deal from the early drafts of Profs. Yun and Rong of MARIC. Initial papers were prepared in the early 2000s for the wave-making and wake analysis based on the approach used at MARIC in the 1990s. The work was updated in 2010 by Prof. Yun in preparation for this book with materials for an introduction to concepts including SWATH, wave piercers and hybrids, resistance and stability, seakeeping, and design development. Since that time, Alan Bliault has completed additional chapters regarding propulsion, structural analysis, outfitting, and project execution and updated the earlier material to incorporate the work of researchers and engineers primarily in Australia and the UK so as to reflect, to the extent possible, the global approach to catamaran and multihull design as it stands in the current decade. We have used a simplistic approach to analysis so as to encourage students to experiment with minimal computational tools. Right now (2018) very sophisticated software is available for line preparation, hydrostatics, and now also much of hydrodynamic modeling. This book aims to provide an understanding of the analyt- ical background of the concepts to be discussed, so that a student or engineer can then use these tools with confidence, rather than treating them as a black box. In large measure naval architecture is still an art and a hull form that is efficient is generally also pleasing to the eye. There is a complicated combination of properties that must be determined and optimized before one can get to that stage, though. While it is now much easier than it was a couple of decades ago to prepare the key models, without an understanding of the key characteristics of a multihull in comparison to a monohull, it may be difficult to arrive at the desired design, so this understanding is our mission with the book. Why are multihull vessels important? High-speed marine craft are generally targeted at missions involving low payload mass and higher volume, such as passengers, RoRo freight, or a specific utility or military task.