The Caird lecture, 2000: The Anglo‐French naval wars (1689–1815) in twentieth‐century naval thought

Abstract

The comfort and the well being on board from small sailing boats to huge passengers ships is the focus of this article that describes the factors directly relationated with the assessment of seakeeping performance of a ship in a specified sea environment. In a recent reference is estimated that nearly 10 million people travel each year on more than 230 cruise ships worldwide. So, the increase of comfort level is one of the naval architecture main tasks. In recent years the development of high-speed craft HSC has been significant. Not only are the dimensions of the vessels increasing, but also service speeds and expectations of performances tend always to increase. Furthermore, it becomes also more common that HSC operate along routes with harsh weather conditions. Therefore, the issues of operability, hydrodynamic loads and comfort are very important in the research being carried out in the HSC area. The construction of a new modern HSC is a huge investment for the ship owner; he needs to be sure about the passengers comfort level. The assessment procedure requires the prediction of transfer functions for different speed and headings for each ship response. These transfer functions are combined with the appropriate spectral formulation based on the sea characteristics. Also the paper emphasizes in the main psychological problems of the passengers on board due to the fatigue and sickness. This study is based on the ship experience and model tests carried out at Ship Dynamics Laboratory in Canal de Experiencias Hidrodinamicas de El Pardo, CEHIPAR (Riola, 2004).