Throughout the world many Platform Supply Vessel designs have been proposed as the optimal form for their given operating environment, but evaluating these claims has been difficult due to a poor understanding of the relationships between hull form shapes and performance for these vessels. This paper presents the results of analysis aimed at determining these relationships.
Results of CFD calculations to determine the Effective Horsepower/tonne for a series of PSV designs were presented in the paper A step towards an optimum PSV Hull form. This paper presents results for 16 separate hull forms, which were designed as each possible combination of four two-level hull form parameters. The hull form features considered were bow shape (vertical stem or bulbous), flat of bottom (flat or deadrise), length of parallel mid body (short or long), and stern shape (convention or integrated); resistance was calculated at two typical operating speeds (10 and 14 knots). This set of results was favourable for analysis using the statistical design of experiments technique: analysis of variance, which was used to determine the relationship between the hull and resistance performance.
The same hull form series was used to study the effects of the hull form parameters on motions in head waves. A 2 level factorial experiment was designed based on the hull parameters with the heave and pitch response calculated using the potential flow ship motion prediction code Shipmo3D, for each of two representative wave conditions (summer light seas and winter heavy seas) at the zero speed and 10 knot operating speed. Analysis of variance was used to analyze the heave and pitch responses measured, and was used to determine the relationship between each hull parameter and each response.
In both cases a 5% F-test was used to determine the significance of each parameter studied, and the significant effects were analyzed to determine their contributions to the overall model of the data.
The results have found the relationships between the hull design parameters and the Effective Horespower/tonne, heave, and pitch response of the vessel, indicating which factors provide the largest contribution to minimizing each response. The interaction effects between factors were also examined to allow for a generalized understanding of the resulting effect of selecting one hull parameter over another. A numerical model combining all significant factors was fitted to the data, allowing for multiple objective optimization to determine which hull forms provide the most desirable performance for each response.
Vertical Motion Optimization of Series 60 Hull Forms Using Response Surface Methods
