Large medium-speed catamarans are a new class of vessel currently under development as fuel-efficient ferries for sustainable fast sea transportation. Appropriate data to derive design guidelines for such vessels are not available and therefore a wide range of demihull slenderness ratios were studied to investigate the design space for fuel-efficient operation. Computational fluid dynamics for viscous free-surface flow simulations were utilised to investigate resistance properties of different catamaran configurations having a similar deadweight at light displacement, but with lengths ranging from 110 m to 190 m. The simulations were conducted at full-scale Reynolds numbers (log(Re) = 8.9 – 9.6) and Froude numbers ranged from Fr = 0.25 to 0.49. Hulls of 130 m and below had high transport efficiency below 26 knots and in light loading conditions while hulls of 150 m and 170 m showed benefits for heavier displacement cases and speeds up to 35 knots. Furthermore, the study concluded that the lowest drag was achieved with demihull slenderness ratios between 11 and 13

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	hull form design; computational fluid dynamics
Research Division:	Engineering
Research Group:	Maritime engineering
Research Field:	Naval architecture
Objective Division:	Transport
Objective Group:	Water transport
Objective Field:	Coastal sea freight transport
UTAS Author:	Haase, M (Dr Max Haase)
UTAS Author:	Binns, JR (Professor Jonathan Binns)
UTAS Author:	Bose, N (Professor Neil Bose)
ID Code:	105505
Year Published:	2015
Web of Science® Times Cited:	2
Deposited By:	NC Maritime Engineering and Hydrodynamics
Deposited On:	2016-01-06
Last Modified:	2017-11-03
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