Preliminary design of a superyacht

Abstract

The challenge for any naval architect, when designing a yacht is to satisfy the client’s requirements while keeping within budget and ensuring the safety of passengers and the environment. The initial design process is quite similar, be it a superyacht or any other seagoing vessel. Seagoing vessels have been designed and constructed for hundreds of years. Ever since, technology has improved, and theoretical aspects have been better understood and applied. Nowadays, all vessel design is performed procedurally through the design spiral. The scope of this final year project is to review current yacht trends, research and study theoretical aspects to finally produce a preliminary design of a superyacht that satisfies several client requirements and, most importantly, complies with rules and regulations. Utilising multiple software to validate, analyse and generate vital data, the focus of such a design is the modelling of the hull, resistance and power estimations, and stability and seakeeping analysis. Through this final year project, a preliminary design of a superyacht was conducted. A yacht of length overall of 38m which was given the name Elysian was designed to meet the design requirements and objectives of the project. By firstly conducting a literature review, the basis of the project and what was to be expected was established. Delving into the theoretical aspects, a better understanding of concepts and essential equations was obtained and later on used in the calculations section. From the procedure undertaken, a yacht having geometrical dimensions similar to the fast displacement hull form was designed and modelled on software. Utilising Compton, and Mercier and Savitsky as the primary resistance prediction methods, the resistance and power were deduced for the yacht’s speed range. Lines plans, tanks plans, general arrangement, and 3D renders were generated using multiple software to better visualise the yacht. Moreover, the yacht was assessed along Bureau Veritas’ general intact stability criteria and passed under all loading conditions. Lastly, by performing motion sickness incidence analysis, the seakeeping of the yacht travelling at cruise speed was tested and resulted in good seakeeping capabilities.