Seaworthiness and resistance performance of a catamaran at preliminary design stage

In the proposed study a fast method to predict the seakeeping behavior of catamarans in waves is described and applied for the sensitivity analysis of its performance in the framework of a preliminary design process. The method is based on two-dimensional potential flow theory in which viscous forces are considered through a cross-flow drag approach. The obtained results show a good agreement with other published theoretical and experimental results. Thanks to the high computational efficiency of the approach, the sensitivity analysis is carried out in a design by optimization fashion, hence spanning over a wide design space to capture the possible existing correlations among the geometric features of the vessel and both its seaworthiness and wave resistance performance, aiming to identify the best catamaran configuration at a very early stage of the design process.