Initial Design of Ocean Car Ferry

Abstract

Recent trend of rapid increase of long distance, coastal service passenger car ferries in Japan is epoch-making and worthy of close attention. Their size has been growing larger and their speed faster surprisingly. However, discussions on the initial design of ferries have rarely been presented in papers to date. The authors considered it worthy to present here some of their philosophy in the initial design of the ferries, and they do expect much more arguments would come to appear hereafter in the papers whenever any improvement in the initial design would be attained. The features of passenger car ferries in relation to the initial design, the principal dimensions and number of cars, arrangement of engine casing, peculiarity of transverse sections, schedule speed etc. are discussed in the paper.