Advanced marine vehicle products database preliminary design tool

Abstract

The term advanced marine vehicle encompasses a broad category of ship designs typically referring to multihull ships such as catamarans, trimarans and SWATH (small waterplane area twin hull) ships, but also includes hovercrafts, SES (surface effect ships), hydrofoils, and advanced monohulls. This study develops an early stage design tool for advanced marine vehicles that provides principal particulars and additional parameters such as fuel capacity and propulsive power based on input ship requirements. This is accomplished by compiling a product database of existing advanced marine vehicles for the development of relationships between ship characteristic parameters. The relationships are analyzed using both the multiple regression analysis and a neural network. Because of the scatter of the data, the first order or linear multiple regression analysis is adopted. The neural network, on the other hand, is a non-linear learning tool that uses existing ship parameters to predict future ship designs. The results are compared with the actual ship parameters to validate the preliminary design tools. The Maui High Performance Computing Center has developed a geographic information system interface for the statistical tools and databases with the additional capabilities to analyze ocean wave environment for the definition of ship design requirements.