On structural design of energy efficient small high-speed craft

This paper presents an integrated design procedure for determination of structural arrangement and scantlings for the complete structure of small high-speed craft. The purpose of the procedure is to serve as a tool in the preliminary design stage where it enables generation of weight minimized designs with very limited effort. The design procedure is applied in a material concept study for a high-speed patrol craft. The various concepts include single skin and sandwich composites, aluminum and steel. It is demonstrated that the mass of the aluminum hull structure can be reduced from the original 11.7 tonnes to 9.6 tonnes through application of the presented design procedure. The most weight efficient material concept is a carbon-fiber foam-cored sandwich with a structural mass of 4.8 tonnes, which is about 50% less than the refined aluminum version. Through simple hydromechanic analysis, potential for fuel and CO2 emission reductions of 8% for the refined aluminum version and 27% for the carbon-fiber sandwich version in relation to the original craft are indicated.