Uncovering secrets behind low-resistance planing craft hull forms through optimization

Abstract

There has always been significant interest within the naval architectural research community to identify ship hull forms with low resistance. While numerous design optimization frameworks have been proposed over the years to support the activity, very little attention has been paid towards the process of gaining an understanding of ‘what makes a good ship design superior?’. Furthermore, there have been limited attempts to identify computationally cheap indicators that can be used to distinguish between good and poor designs. A recent technique named discovery of innovative design principles, which is aimed at understanding the relationship between the design variables, is incorporated in this work. In this article, optimal high-speed planing craft hull forms with minimum calm-water resistance are identified through the use of three state-of-the-art optimization algorithms. Collections of such designs are then used to uncover insights into the underlying relationships between the variables. The importance of such relationships is further analysed to identify computationally cheap performance indicators that can be used in lieu of detailed calm-water resistance calculations. Such indicators are useful at the concept and preliminary design stages, where one needs to sieve efficiently through a number of candidate designs to identify the better ones for further analysis.