Experimental study of the resistance to the movement of trimaran vessels

Abstract

The aim of the work is to develop a method for finding the resistance of a trimaran ship at the initial stages of design, depending on the geometric characteristics of the central hull, outriggers and their mutual position. The program of model tests in the experimental tank is characterized. Based on the analysis of the experimentally obtained data, the graphs of the resistance dependence on the Froude number for the trimaran ship model with the fore, central and stern arrangement of outriggers are presented. A graph of the outriggers’ location influence along the vessel length on its hydrodynamic resistance is also shown. A method for calculating the hydrodynamic resistance for a trimaran vessel at the stages of research design is proposed, which is an adjustment of a single-hull vessel model tests’ recalculation classical principle. One of the developed graphs of the residual drag coefficient dependence on the relative speed according to the Froude number for various central hull geometric characteristics of the vessel, outriggers and their relative position is presented. The analysis of serial model tests made it possible to establish the dependence of the trimaran ship resistance on the geometric characteristics of the central hull and outriggers, and their relative position relative to each other in this study. The method proposed in this work will make it possible to substantiate the best layout of outriggers when solving the problem of optimizing the design elements and characteristics of a trimaran at the research design stage.