Design and Hydromechanic Aspects of the Amphibious Transport Vessel for the Royal Netherlands Navy

Abstract

In order to meet an increasing demand of amphibious lift capacity and logistic support, the Royal Netherlands Navy decided to procure an amphibious transport vessel (ATS), designed as a Landing Platform Dock (LPD). In the first part of this paper an outline of missions and tasks is provided, followed by a description of the preliminary design which has been produced by the Directorate of Materiel of the Royal Netherlands Navy. The ATS, now in the final stage of the forward design phase, will be able to transport a number of landing craft, six LCVP MK HI of the R Nl Navy or four LCVP MK 9B's of the Royal Navy, in a well dock. A major requirement is that embarking and disembarking operations will be possible for sea conditions up to Sea State 4. These operations can only be possible with low wave motions in the well dock. An extensive research program was carried out to investigate the hydromechanic aspects of the well dock design, in order to assess the safety of embarking and disembarking of landing craft and to minimize wave motions in the dock. After performing reference seakeeping tests with a model of a proven design (Fearless class, RN) at MARIN, a preliminary design of the ATS was tested: motion and wave measurements as well as observations with radio controlled models of landing craft. A number of options for improvement of the well dock configuration were investigated. The research provided insight in the relation between design and environmental parameters and wave motions in the dock, and resulted in a well dock design optimized for embarking and disembarking operations within design constraints.