Wave Patterns and Minimum Wave Resistance for High-Speed Vessels

Flow fields and wave patterns are computed in both the near and far field of a moving ship-like disturbance of small amplitude, using efficient routines for the 3D Havelock source. Classical thin-ship wave patterns can be computed for conventional ships, catamarans or sub-marines by this method, accurately and with extremely fine detail, in minutes on inexpensive desktop comput-ers. Similar methods can be used for surface pressure distributions, modelling either hovercraft or planing ves-sels of small draft. In contrast to the thin-ship case, the ability to compute accurate near-field flows is essential to the solution process for a prescribed planing surface, which requires solution of an integral equation to deter-mine the equivalent pressure distribution. Such pressure distributions can also be optimised to minimise wave re-sistance, from which follows a formally simpler design process for planing surfaces, where the shape of the sur-face is output rather than input