Design of high speed craft: The human factor

Design procedures for high speed craft are currently centred on performance and structural considerations. Dramatic improvements in craft performance in recent years have led to crew injury, fatigue or performance loss becoming the limiting factor for high speed operation, particularly offshore. This has resulted in the re-evaluation of the primary design considerations to centre the design process on human capabilities.In this paper a systematic procedure is developed to enable direct correlation between numerical, or model-scale, motion data and human responses in the full scale craft. The nature of different modes of motion and their specific effects on the performance of a vessel’s crew are analysed in both a quantitative and qualitative manner. This investigation has identified the factors most detrimental to crew endurance and their performance post-transit. A procedure for measuring human responses to full scale vessel motion, enabling real time measurements of crew reactions to be made, is described. Data acquired for a high speed rigid inflatable boat, including measurements of sea state, vessel motions, seat motions and human responses are discussed together with associated towing tank results and predictions of vessel motion from a numerical method. An overview of the computational techniques used for predicting motions of high speed craft is given concentrating on recent improvements to them. Such an approach, combining simulation with full scale data, allows direct correlation between crew physiological and psychological responses and the sea conditions for different craft designs. This in turn enables the human response to vessel operations to be considered when the craft are being designed.