A STRATEGY FOR THE REDUCTION OF STRUCTURAL WEIGHT OF COMPOSITE VESSELS

Hull weight is a main structural concern in pleasure craft design, being in such project the maximum speed one of the most important contractual limits imposed by owner to shipyards. This is particularly true for composite structures, where the structural layouts and the beams' dimensions may vary significantly among very similar projects, resulting in very different structural weights. Moreover, for this type of vessels, the structural weight is a significant percentage of the total displacement, and, consequently, reducing the structural components leads to important total weight reduction. The present work aims to orient the preliminary design stage of composite pleasure yacht structural design towards an optimal configuration of the structural layout in terms of hull weight, within the current framework of rules provided by classification societies.