On the Initial Design of a Monohull/Catamaran Ship RIVERSEA

Abstract

RIVERSEA is a new idea ship. When she starts from a shallow river in down town, she is a monohull and when in high speed sailing at sea, she metamorphoses to a catamaran by lifting up mechanism of her cabin. The first work of RIVERSEA design was model ship experiments in a high speed circulating water channel so as to obtain the informations of sailing conditions i.e. trim, sinkage, wave making and spray. At the same time, the operation of hydrofoils in the catamaran condition were investigated. These results and inforations were directly taken in to the inital design. The second work was to determine the pricipal particulars and to drow a rough general arrangement. In this stage, the investigation of mechanism for lift up/down of her cabin and fixing it were carried out in parallel. This was ons of the most difficult work of the project. The third was to certify the strength of RIVERSEA and to estimate the vibration phenomena. This report describes these design works of each step, together with successful results of sea trial of RIVERSEA.