| Small naval architecture companies most often use commercial off the shelf software for the design and analysis of small craft. This project is concerned with the improvement of a design methodology that can be used to provide designers more options and better information on prospective hulls that are candidates for a small craft. The study used Maxsurf in conjunction with Visual Basic Application (VBA) and EXCEL to develop an iterative design methodology that can assist in the selection of a more optimal candidate hull form. The hull form is analysed from different performance aspects such as resistance, seakeeping and stability. Furthermore, automatically generated hulls based on selected best optimal parent hull are assessed and ranked according to these performance parameters. An example of a pilot boat is used to demonstrate the various aspects and the advantages of the proposed design methodology. |
