Hull Form Development for a High-Speed Trimaran Trailership

I. Mizine
Computer Science Corporation, Advanced Marine Center, Washington, DC, USA

S. Harries & M. Brenner

Friendship Systems GmbH, Potsdam, Germany

ABSTRACT: The paper describes the hull form development of an innovative High-Speed Trimaran
Trailership (HSTT), capable of carrying about 160 53ft-trailers in the speed range from 26 to 32 knots. Calmwater performance, in particular the trade-off between cruise speed and top speed, is studied on the basis of
first-principle methods, utilizing non-linear free surface potential flow and boundary layer calculations. A
baseline comprising the center hull and the side hulls was created in a traditional design process. These
shapes were utilized as input to a partially parametric model by which displacement distribution, bulb shape
and the side hull stagger could be changed. The design space was investigated by means of various Designof-Experiments to develop an appreciation of dependencies (exploration). A multi-objective genetic
algorithm was then repeatedly used to produce non-dominated solutions (exploitation). Energy consumption
at two prominent speeds was simultaneously improved, while observing important constraints such as initial
stability. The proposed HSTT design addresses dual use as a fast ship for military mobility and as a highspeed complement for trade along Interstate 95 at the US East Coast.

1 INTRODUCTION
High-speed sea transportation usually calls for
unconventional hull forms since the energy
consumption of large conventional monohulls scales
up too rapidly with an increase in speed. A trimaran
concept was therefore studied for both commercial
and military applications, introducing an innovative
High-Speed Trimaran Trailership (HSTT), see
Figure 1.
The HSTT follows the requirements set by
America's Marine Highways (AMH), an evolving
US strategy, according to which commercial
trailerships could be utilized to decongest traffic
along the US East Coast, in particular on Interstate
95 (Boston-Miami). High-speed sea transport over
more than 1 000 nautical miles would need to be
covered.
The HSTT also supports the requirements
associated with capability for military mobility in
many inter and intra theater Sealift and Sea Base
scenarios. Again fast ships would be required but
with a range of unrefueled voyages of up to 9 500
nautical miles.
Consequently, a dual use concept was worked
out which would hold the potential for the US armed
forces to lease necessary and capable ships for their
IX HSMV Naples 25 - 27 May 2011

missions that, otherwise, would be used regularly to

shift transport from road to sea.

Figure 1: Hull form of the High-Speed Trimaran Trailership

The paper focuses on the hydrodynamic

development of the trimaran hulls on the basis of
simulation-driven design, i.e., a process in which
first-principle methods, here for numerical flow
simulation, are intensively utilized not only to
1

analyze a few competing alternatives, but rather to

stir the creation of many variants by searching for
favorable performance (Harries 2008).
The paper's layout is as follows: Principle ideas
and requirements for the trimaran design are covered
in section 2. The partially parametric modeling
approach taken for creating variants and the flow
simulation used to assess their hydrodynamic
performance are outlined in section 3. Section 4
elaborates on the formal studies to understand the
design space and to identify promising candidates.
Section 5 presents the conclusions along with an
outlook.

2 DESIGN RATIONALE
The HSTT implements the type of the hull forms
developed as prototypes for costal trimarans by
(Vom Saal et al 2005) and Heavy Air Lift Support
Ship (HALSS) by (Mizine et al 2009). The HSTT
hull form has most of the displacement in the center
hull, with small waterplane area (SWA) side hulls
providing stability, as show in Figure 1. This ship
carries 160 x 53ft trailers in eight bays or 240 x 40ft
trailers in 10 bays on two decks. The upper deck has
11 rows while the second deck has 10 rows to
provide room for structure (pillars) and access.
All diesel engines are in the central hull with the
main engine aft and the diesel-generator sets
forward. The total installed power is about 66 MW,
providing 54 MW at the propellers. Diesel engine
exhausts are led through the crossover deck from the
center hull to the stack as shown in Figure 2.

There are two main reasons to select contra-rotating

propulsion. Firstly, there is improved efficiency by
absorbing rotational losses with the aft propeller.
Secondly, contra-rotating propulsion allows the
beneficial distribution of thrust load over a larger
number of propeller blades in a confined space. The
added total blade area then results in improved
cavitation characteristics so that more power can be
fed to a contra-rotating system with smaller
propellers. This is especially important for a sealift
asset with requirements for shallow-draft port
accessibility. Without restrictions on the diameter,
the benefit of a system with less noise and cavitation
remains. Finally, an azimuthing electric propulsion
unit yields excellent maneuvering characteristics
The selection of waterjets in the side hulls is
based on overall fuel efficiency in consideration of
the dual use profile. When operating at speeds up to
26 kn only the center hull propulsion would be
utilized. For higher speeds the side hull waterjets
would have to be brought into action. Hence, the
configuration avoids substantial wind milling at
speeds below the cruise speed.
The HSTT hull forms were developed in
consideration of arrangement requirements, stability
constraints and hydrodynamic optimization. A major
factor in the power requirement of a trimaran is the
interaction between the wave train produced by the
center hull and the wave trains produced by the side
hulls. Ideally, the two should counteract each other
at the primary speed(s) of interest. Lessons learned
from HALSS numerical analysis and model testing
confirmed that wave interference and optimization
are the key issues for the proper design of trimarans
(Mizine at al 2008, 2009). Hence, they were
intensively studied within the HSTT project.

3
Figure 2: Main propulsion arrangement

Several machinery options were evaluated, with the

following combination identified as most promising:

Center hull: 19.2 MW medium-speed diesel

engine geared to a fixed-pitch propeller,

IX HSMV Naples 25 - 27 May 2011

aligned with a contra-rotating 14 MW

Azipod, arranged to recover wake losses.
Each side hull: 12 MW electric motor geared
to a waterjet, powered by diesel-generator
sets located in the center hull to provide good
access for maintenance.

MODELING AND SIMULATION

The formal process of hull form development was

completely set up within the Computer Aided
Engineering (CAE) software FRIENDSHIPFramework, making use of the interfaced flow code
SHIPFLOW. The FRIENDSHIP-Framework served
as both the geometric modeling engine and the
controller
for
simulation-driven
design
(FRIENDSHIP 2011).

3.1 Partially parametric model

Since an advanced initial design had been
established in Rhino prior to the systematic hull
form development, it was decided to utilize the
existing lines and apply partially parametric
modeling for variation. Contrary to a fully
parametric model in which the entire geometry is
hierarchically built up from scratch, e.g. (Harries
2010), the partially parametric model takes an
existing shape and only specifies the desired changes
by means of parameters. The general idea is that of a
chamber of mirrors in an amusement park: Distorted
mirrors lead to images that are different in shape and
yield more or less favorable variants.

Figure 3: Example variations of center hull without skeg

(top: baseline, middle: highest increase in displacement,
bottom: largest inflation of bulb)

side hulls were not changed in shape but shifted

longitudinally and transversally while maintaining
starboard-port symmetry, Figure 4.
Up to seven parameters of the partially
parametric model were controlled as free variables
during the investigations, three of which altered the
displacement volume and longitudinal center of
buoyancy of the center hull, two modified the bulb's
volume and profile while the last two changed the
position of the side hulls.
3.2 Computational Fluid Dynamics
Typical options of Computational Fluid Dynamics
(CFD) for calm-water hydrodynamics currently
encompass potential flow analysis of the free wave
system along with thin boundary layer calculations
and, alternatively, fully viscous flow analysis
including the free surface. The right choice of CFD
depends on the specific trade-off between accuracy,
speed and usability.
The trimaran hulls being rather slender and the
wave making being of paramount importance at
speeds of 26 kn and 32 kn (corresponding to Froude
numbers of 0.32 and 0.39, respectively, at a
reference length of around 180 m), a non-linear
potential flow simulation with free sinkage and trim
was considered to give meaningful results for the
ranking of variants. Therefore, the optimizations
were based on SHIPFLOW, capitalizing on the fast
turn-around time of the software's zonal approach
(FLOWTECH 2004, 2009).

Figure 4: Example variations of side hull position

(top: baseline, middle: most forward position of side hulls,
bottom: most outward position of side hulls)

Here a longitudinal shift of sections was applied for

the trimaran's center hull, employing the Generalized
Lackenby approach of swinging sections
longitudinally in a highly concerted manner (Abt
and Harries 2007), while a surface delta shift was
used to inflate and deflate the bulb, Figure 3. The
IX HSMV Naples 25 - 27 May 2011

Figure 5: Wave generation of center hull at

26 kn (upper part) and 32 kn (lower part)

Figure 5 shows the wave generation of the center

hull without the side hulls at the two speeds of
interest, namely 26 kn and 32 kn. The changes in
wave lengths and the distinct interferences can be
3

nicely observed by comparing the upper and lower

halves in Figure 5. The different positions and
pronunciations of crests and troughs readily give rise
to the assumption of favorable and unfavorable side
hull positions but also directly suggest that a
beneficial side hull position for one speed might be
less advantageous for the other; cp. e.g. (Yang
2001), (Brizzolara et al 2005).
Both the potential flow and boundary layer
calculations done with SHIPFLOW are relatively
fast, typically 5-10 minutes of CPU time on an
average workstation.

4 FORMAL STUDIES

Figure 6: Pressure distributions on center hull

with and without skeg at 26 kn (side hulls omitted)

4.1 Design with and without skeg

The proposed design featured a conventional
propeller plus a contra-rotating POD drive in tractor
mode. An important question for the hull form
development
therefore
was
whether
the
characteristics of the center hull's propulsion train
would have a significant influence on wave making
that needed to be taken into account during the
optimizations. Two designs with and without skeg
were considered as options. Figures 3, 4 and 6 give
an impression.
For clarification a first Design-of-Experiments
(DoE) was conducted in which only the center hull
was altered, while the side hulls were omitted. For
each form variation the two alternatives, one with
and the other without skeg, were concurrently
analyzed at cruise speed and at top speed.
Figure 6 displays the pressure distributions over
the center hull for a representative variant. It can be
seen that close to the skeg the pressure distribution
changes, as is expected, while closer to the free
surface along the hull, i.e., the regions that stimulate
wave generation the most, very little differences
occur. Figure 7 exemplarily depicts the overlay of
waves for a variant with and its counterpart without
skeg. The isolines of wave height that appear very
close to each other, in particular, aft of the hull, stem
from the alternative aftbodies. In the forebody there
is practically no difference to be seen while the
deviations in the far field are rather subtle. When
plotting the wave resistance for all variants from the
DoE for the designs with skeg (ordinate) vs. the
designs without skeg (abscissa), Figure 8, it becomes
apparent that the ranking of designs is not really
affected. For the lower speed of 26 kn the variants
almost line up on a straight line (blue diamonds).
For the higher speed of 32 kn there are some minor
oscillations for variants (red rectangles) that perform
about equally well.
IX HSMV Naples 25 - 27 May 2011

Figure 7: Overlay of waves generated by center hull

with and without skeg (side hulls omitted)

Figure 8: Ranking of variants with regard to wave resistance

for center hull with and without skeg (side hulls omitted)

It was therefore concluded that wave resistance

optimizations could be undertaken either with or
without skeg and then reasonably generalized
afterwards. It was decided to build further
investigations on the baseline with skeg.
Nevertheless, the correlation seen in Figure 8 gives
the comforting thought of not having to repeat the

full exercise if a vessel without skeg would be

pursued in the end.

well as by the change in the pressure distribution on

the main hull, as shown in Figure 9.

4.2 Exploration
A comprehensive DoE with 250 variants was run for
the trimaran configuration with the following free
variables acting on the shape of the main hull and on
the positions of the center hull:

deltaCP: change of prismatic coefficient

within the interval [-0.01, +0.035]
deltaXCB: change of the longitudinal center
of buoyancy [-1%, +1%] of LPP
midTan: change of tangent of the shift
function at the main section, [-60, + 60]
bulbTipDz: vertical movement of the bulb tip
within the interval [-1m, +0.8m]
bulbFullnessFactor: increase of bulb volume
via surface shift within [0, 2]
sideHullDx: longitudinal position of the side
hull wrt the baseline, [-10m, +20m]
sideHullDy: transversal position of the side
hulls wrt the baseline, [-2m, +2m]

The different resistance components and some

hydrostatic properties were evaluated for every
variant, with the total resistance being the main
objective. In terms of speed this investigation was
limited to the cruise speed of 26 kn. The purpose of
the DoE was to develop an understanding of the
systems behavior within the design space and to
identify promising regions for further exploitation
(see following section).

Figure 10: Performance of trimaran variants at 26 kn plotted

for longitudinal (top) and transversal (bottom) side hull
positions

Especially the longitudinal position of the side hulls

exhibits a strong linear relationship to the resistance
within the range of the design variable, as depicted
in Figure 10 top. At the speed of 26 kn it is clearly
better to move the side hull forward, as long as the
LCB position is not negatively influenced above
reason. The transversal position has a smaller, but
still significant influence on the resistance, see
Figure 10 bottom. It is favorable to move the side
hulls to the inside, closer to main hull. The deciding
constraint here is the stability.
Figure 9: Pressure distribution on trimaran with skeg at 26 kn

The results of the DoE showed a strong dominance

in the influence of the side hulls position, while the
influence of the main hull parameters, being much
smaller, basically vanished in the background noise.
As previously discussed the effect of the side hulls
on the resistance is mostly given by the favorable or
unfavorable interferences in the wave pattern, as

IX HSMV Naples 25 - 27 May 2011

4.3 Exploitation
Due to the experiences made in the previous design
space exploration, it was decided to separately
optimize for the most favorable side hull position
first, taking into account the resistances at both
relevant speeds. Because the relevance of every
single speed was not known well enough to obtain a
meaningful weighting in a single objective function,
a multi-objective optimization algorithm was
5

selected. This would produce a Pareto set of nondominated solutions, from which a suitable
compromise design can be selected afterwards. The
selected algorithm was the non-dominated sorting
genetic algorithm NSGA-II (Deb 2002) with 13
generations and a population size of 12 per
generation. The mutation probability was set to 0.01
and the crossover probability to 0.9.
The first optimization run with the full range of
the side hull variables and constant center hull shape
produced ca. 150 feasible variants and a distinct
Pareto frontier, see Figure 11. The first conclusion
that was evident from this set of designs and the
additional data for the higher speed, was the
opposite influence of the longitudinal side hull
position on the two resistance values. Moving the
side hull forward is favorable at 26 kn, but
detrimental for the resistance at 32 kn. Furthermore,
moving the side hull inwards has small influence at
26 kn but a more significant effect at 32 kn. An
interesting feature that could be observed was a
hook-like local minimum in the upper half of the
Pareto set. The design located in the tip of this hook
(c in Figure 11) and four other interesting designs
were selected as starting points for further
investigations. The other four designs were:

interesting results by further enhancing this local

minimum.

The design (a) with the lowest power

requirement at 26 kn. The max. power
requirement (at 32 kn) is higher than for the
baseline.
The design (b) with the same max. power
requirement as the baseline (the same engine
could be used) but a reduced power
requirement at 26 kn.
The design (d) with the same power
requirement as the baseline at 26 kn, but
smaller max. power requirement.
The design (e) with the lowest max. power
requirement, but higher power requirement at
26 kn than the baseline.

Figure 11: Effective power requirement of trimaran variants at

26 kn (horizontal axis) and 32 kn (vertical axis)

A local multi-objective optimization (NSGA-II) was

started from each one of these designs. The design
variables for the center hull were included in these
optimization runs, while the range of the side hull
variables was restricted to the vicinity of the
respective current values. Each run produced 50 to
250 additional variants. The purpose was to find the
optimal center hull for every selected position of the
side hulls, allowing for some adaptation of this
position.
While the other runs mainly remained in the
region of the Pareto set, the run started from the
variant in the tip of the hook produced the most
IX HSMV Naples 25 - 27 May 2011

Figure 12: Design space of the side hull positions. Longitudinal

position on the vertical axis, transversal on the horizontal

Some more interesting information is given by

inspecting the distribution of the variants in the
design space of the side hull positions, see
Figure 12. Obviously, the local optimizations form
distinct clusters. The Pareto set is reflected by the
left and upper border, with the hook local
minimum in the upper left corner. All the designs
above the hook in Figure 11 are on the upper
border, the ones right and below in Figure 11 are on
the left border. This picture seems to give a good
indication for the specific shape of the Pareto
frontier.
As expected from the previous investigations,
the final optimized design has an inward and
forward position of the side hulls. The volume is
slightly decreased with almost no movement of the
center hulls center of buoyancy. Furthermore, the
bulb is significantly fuller, with a higher bulb tip.
See the details in Table 1.

complete speed range, as the computed speed-power

curve shows (Figure 14).
Table 1: Properties of optimized design. All variable values are
equal to 0 for the baseline

Variable
deltaCP
deltaXCB
midTan
bulbTipDz
bulbFullness
sideHullDx
sideHullDy

Value
-9.265E-03
1.921E-04
-23.428 deg
0.795 m
1.943
19.994 m
-1.947 m

Figure 14: Speed-power curves for baseline and optimized

design. Ranges of variation for different trim and sinkage
conditions indicated by arrows.

Figure 13: Wave generation of trimaran at 26 kn (top) and

32 kn (bottom). Upper part of each picture: baseline, lower
part: favorable design

The favorable interferences lead to a greatly

attenuated wave pattern with a reduced energy
content, see Figure 13 for the waves at 26 kn and
32 kn. In comparison to the performance of baseline,
the power requirement was reduced by 9.5% at
26 kn and by 4.2% at 32 kn. Overall, the optimized
design behaves better than the baseline within the
IX HSMV Naples 25 - 27 May 2011

4.4 Robustness analysis

To ensure the robustness of the optimized design for
off-design conditions, a sensitivity analysis with
respect to different trim and sinkage situations was
carried out. The drafts at the forward and aft
perpendicular were set as independent design
variables and an ensemble investigation was
performed with variable values within the range of
+/- 0.5 m compared to the design draft. Aside from
the optimized design, the same investigation was
done for the baseline for comparison.
7

The ranges of variation with respect to the

required effective power can be seen in Figure 14. It
is evident that the optimized design behaves in a
very similar way to the baseline design. Therefore, it
is assured that the optimized design is not sitting on
a knifes edge optimum. It will not suddenly
become much worse, if the ship is sailing at slightly
other than design conditions.

5 CONCLUSIONS
A new hull form was developed for a High-Speed
Trimaran Trailership (HSTT), utilizing the
FRIENDSHIP-Framework for simulation-driven
design. A baseline design was taken and
parametrically modified in order to bring about
optimal performance at two important speeds,
namely at 26 kn and 32 kn. The hull form of the
center hull and the side hull positions were changed
systematically in order to identify a Pareto-optimal
solution of minimum resistance while satisfying
various constraints on stability, weight and
arrangement and complying with requirements on
overall beam, trim, position of longitudinal center of
buoyancy etc. Hence, the best combination was
sought for low power, good stability and high
loading efficiency with all cargo on two decks.
Hull form optimization of trimarans benefits
widely from powerful tools comprising (automated)
hull form transformations, adequate simulation and
practical optimization strategies. This set of tools is
combined within the FRIENDSHIP-Framework. The
practical design case of an HSTT proved its
applicability. The numerical results naturally need to
be further validated in the course of model tests.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The HSTT concept evaluation and test program have
been sponsored by Center for Commercial Deployment
of Transportation Technologies (CCDOTT) and the
Office of Naval Research (ONR). The FRIENDSHIP
SYSTEMS calculations and analysis have been
performed based on Cooperative Research Agreement
between FRIENDSHIP SYSTEMS AND CSC
Advanced Marine Center, CCDOTT and ONR.

IX HSMV Naples 25 - 27 May 2011

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