Page 176 - Practical Design Ships and Floating Structures

Practical Design of Ships and Other Floating Structures 151
You-Sheng Wu, Wei-Cheng Cui and Guo-Jun Zhou (Eds)
0 2001 Elsevicr Science Ltd. All rights reserved

HULL FORM DEVELOPMENT AND POWEFUNG PERFORMANCE
CHARACTERISTICS FOR A 2,500TON CLASS TRIMARAN

Kuk-Jin Kangl, Chun-Ju Lee’, Do-Hyun Kim’

’ Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering,
P. 0. Box 23 Yusung, Taejon, 305-600, Korea

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the results of hull form design and powering performance for a 2,500ton class
trimaran. A series of resistance tests and numerical calculations have been conducted to figure out the
influence of side-hull forms, longitudinal and transverse locations on the resistance characteristics of
the trimaran. And the propulsion test was conducted to investigate the propulsion efficiency of the
trimaran, and the powering performance of the trimaran was compared with that of the similar
mono-hull ships in full scale. From the research it was found that the longitudinal location of side-hull
had a large influence on the resistance characteristics of the trimaran while the side-hull form and
transverse location had a small influence on it. The trimaran showed favorable resistance performance
when the side-hull was located near the stem, which was resulted from the fact that the side-hull stem
was located near the primary wave hollow generated by the main hull. The powering performance of
the trimaran was superior to that of the similar mono-hull ships above the middle speed range.

KEYWORDS
Trimaran, Side-hull, Optimum Location, Powering Performance, Resistance, Wave Interference

1 INTRODUCTION

The demand for high-speed ships has been increased in the cadpassenger ferry market during last
decade. Many different types of ship concept and hull forms have been considered to meet the demand.
Among them, the trimaran, which consists of a slender main hull and two very fine side-hulls, is one of
the most interesting hull form. The trimaran has several advantages over other hull forms, such as low
resistance at high speeds, easy arrangement on wide deck, superior seakeeping performance in waves,
high survivability in damaged condition and reduction of thermal signature and radar cross-section etc.
On the other hand, the trimaran has several disadvantages, such as increase of hull weight, difficult
handling in harbor etc. The feasibility studies and the application examples on the trimaran were
introduced in recent FAST symposium and etc. In particular, many researches on the trimaran and the
construction of “RV Triton” in U.K. is very encouraging the possibility for the future warship.