OCEAN CATAMARAN SEAKEEPING DESIGN, BASED ON THE EXPERIMENTS OF USNS HAYES

Operating experience with the first oceangoing catamaran of the U.S. Navy, the USNS HAYES (T-AGOR-16), exposed seakeeping problems which had to be solved if the ship were to live up to expectations. The first winter of operation in the North Atlantic revealed that relatively large bow motion resulted in cross-structure slamming. As a result of research and development work at the Naval Ship Research and Development Center, a pitch- and heave-damping hydrofoil was installed forward. The relative bow motion was reduced about 30 percent, resulting in a corresponding reduction in frequency and magnitude of cross-structure slamming. The foil installation also resulted in reduced roll and corkscrew motion, thus significantly improving the general seakindliness of the ship. The ship is now judged to be an effective and efficient oceanographic research ship. The paper presents highlights from the model development and full-scale trial programs conducted on HAYES, followed by analytic means developed at the Center for predicting motion and dynamic loads on catamarans in waves. These predictions are correlated with the model and full-scale measurements made on HAYES. So that future designers of catamarans may have the benefit of the experience gained from HAYES, the last part of the paper treats the design of catamarans for seakindliness by first identifying the special seakeeping problems of the catamarans and then making parametric studies of variations in hull and cross-structure geometry. The responses are calculated, using real-ocean spectra measured in the North Atlantic.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Presented at the SNAME Annual Meeting, New York, N.Y., Nov. 14-16, 1974.
• Corporate Authors:

  Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers

  601 Pavonia Avenue
  Jersey City, NJ  United States  07306-2907
• Authors:
  • Hadler, J B
  • Lee, C M
  • Birmingham, J T
  • Jones, H D
• Publication Date: 1974-11

Media Info

• Features: References;
• Pagination: 26 p.
• Serial:
  • Issue Number: 2

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Catamarans; Electromagnetic spectrum; Seakeeping; Seas; Slamming
• Old TRIS Terms: Sea spectra
• Subject Areas: Marine Transportation; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00071642
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Nov 12 1974 12:00AM