Designed ‘from the ground up’ for high speed, many trade-offs were made within the hullform parameters of this notional 298 m, 36,000 Long Ton, High Speed Sealift (HSS) ship, in an effort to optimize 39-knot performance. Resistance and powering comparisons are drawn between several hullform and propulsor combinations, considered the most applicable to HSS, which include: conventional 2-screw and 4-screw, open-propeller, shaft and strut; waterjet propulsion (axial and mixed-flow jet hulls); hybrid contra-rotating shaft-pod (twin shafts, twin pods) and dual-pods (twin sets of dual pods). This model-scale evaluation established that 39-knots was achievable by several candidate hullform and propulsor variations on this sealift ship, within the anticipated installed power levels.
