A study on the characteristics of roll damping of multi-hull vessels

Abstract

In this study, for a catamaran and a trimaran as multi-hull vessels, the characteristics of the roll damping are investigated experimentally. A free roll decay test and a forced roll motion test with and without forward speed are carried out. The results show that the roll damping of them is much larger than that of conventional mono-hull vessels, and the component created by side-hull accounts for a significant rate for trimaran. Especially, at the condition without forward speed, the interference of waves created by hulls are significant, the measured roll damping values by different experiments are different on the basis of different water surface condition created by hulls. Moreover, the simplified prediction method is proposed. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.