A Study into the Selection of Mono- and Multi-Hull Vessel for Better Sea Transportation System

Abstract

Intensive and continuous research into the development of monohull and multihull vessels (catamaran and trimaran) has been carried out at the Department of Naval Architecture of the Institute of Technology Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) at Surabaya – Indonesia. The work covers the aspects of resistance and powering, ship stability, layout arrangement and ship performance at sea which is better known as seakeeping. Three configurations of ship, namely mono-hull, twin-hull (catamaran), and three-hull (trimaran), were compared. In details, resistance and powering and seakeeping aspects were based on experimental and numerical investigations, ship stability evaluation was centred on the international maritime organization (IMO) criteria, and layout arrangement review was based on general ship design criteria. Final results show that the three types of vessel have demonstrated its own advantages, for example catamaran and trimaran has better transverse stability and monohull shows better seakeeping characteristics at higher speed. These results are also compared with other published data, which show very close agreement.