摘要: |
The development of passenger transportation on inland waterways and seagoing vessels requires the design of fast ships. The purpose of the communication is to review the specific requirements and constraints of the high-speed passenger vessels like the Corsaire fast ferries (Alstom Leroux Naval), including the technological challenge that represents their design. Emphasis is given on new numerical tools for early design and structure analysis (optimization scantling). The technical challenges are varied and concern, functionality’s (speed, comfort and seakeeping, capacity, etc.), advanced design (multi-hull, light material as aluminum), ship’s structure with regards to limit states and design criteria (fatigue, vibration, noise, propulsion), economic (design needs expensive advanced R&D, yards must have high production efficiency and low production costs), aesthetic, and obviously port infrastructures to ease and speed the passengers transfer but also the ships’ berthing. The need for fast ships (ferries, multi-hulls) having exceptional dimensions (length, capacity, speed), use of new material, advanced hull forms, etc. point out lacks in standard design codes proposed by the major classification societies (BV, Lloyd, DnV, ABS). Designers cannot use these rules. They need to perform direct and rational analysis of the ship structure using, for instance, finite element analysis (FEA) including 3D coarse mesh model of the entire structure and fine mesh models for the components where stress concentration is expected. Nevertheless, in the earliest design stage these powerful tools are not effective and there is still a lack of tools for preliminary design (hull form, propulsion, scantling), weight estimation, assessment of the production cost, etc. At that stage, the available time is too short to use advanced software. It is necessary to use specific tools adjusted to the real needs. AVPRO and LBR-5 are two examples of such new preliminary design tools. AVPRO is a preliminary design software dedicated to the naval architect. It is used to define the hull form (Fig. 4), mid-ship section (Fig. 7), stability (Fig. 5) and propulsion assessment and a general ship arrangement (Fig. 6). LBR-5 helps designers and builders lowering building costs and performs structural optimization at the earliest design stage. It is used to perform the hull girder scantling within a reduced time, including optimization. It provides the optimum thickness of the plates, stiffeners, frames, etc. The objective function of the optimization process can be the minimum construction cost or the least weight. |