Structure Design And Strength Assessment Of High Speed Trimarans

In recent years,the development of the high-speed trimaran has attracted more attention at domestic and abroad. As a new type of high-performance ships, trimaran's rapidity, sea keeping and stability are so remarkable. It is generally believed that, trimaran's overall performance is better than monohull ship and catamaran with the same displacement. So there are broad prospects for civil and military using.Although there are many literatures on the trimaran's hydrodynamic aspects, but in the area of structural design and strength evaluation, the research is relative slow, and the literatures are really rare. Therefore, it is significant to conduct research in this area with three-dimensional finite element model.According to the trimaran's ship features, this paper conduct structural design in the scope of entire vessel according to Lloyd's rules for the classification of trimarans and military ships. It has formed a set of relatively complete trimaran's design and assessment methods. The main contents include:1. Determined the structure's layout form and structure size, especially the main hull and the side hull's connection form according to its principal particulars and lines. Carried out structural design at main hull, side hull, cross-deck and other key parts.2. Calculated the trimaran's global loads and local loads according to rules.3. Designed the trimaran's typical section by using computation method. Designed the grillage's structure form and size, and then, conducted optimization deigning for side hull and cross-deck reference to relevant rules.4. Conducted the rule checking about main hull's longitudinal strength and cross-deck's transverse strength.5. Established whole ship's three-dimensional finite element model ,mainly with MSC.Patran, conducted direct calculation with eight conditions according to the rules, and then conducted yield and bucking examination.