Experimental & Numerical Investigation of Powering for a Trimaran Hull Form

Abstract

Design concept for a large-sized trimaran hull form and investigation of the powering performance by numerical calculation and experiments are presented. The trimaran had a center main hull and small side hulls or outriggers. In the trimaran concept, the interaction of wave making from the main hull and side hulls has influence on the design of the trimaran hull form since considerable reduction of wave-resistance could be possible by the proper location of the side hulls. As the results, the wave between the main hull and side hulls mainly is affected by the longitudinal location of side hulls and Froude number, while less by transverse location. At high speed, the results show that favorable interaction occurrs when the side hulls are located at the midship of the main hull and unfavorable interaction occurrs when the side hulls are located at x0/L= 0.3. In the speed range above 30.0 knots (Fn=0.32 이， the trimaran with the optimum location of side hulls required less effective power than the monohull with the same displacement.