Direct inclusion of seakeeping ergonomic criteria in the computerized design of small crafts.

• Main Author: Majumder, Mizanur R.
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/10295

Dr. Akinturk showed that the design process of a small craft can be computerized, and new design nodes, such as crew safety or acceleration levels can be included in the preliminary design. This study goes one step further by directly including ergonomic criteria in the preliminary ship design process. In addition, the design platform selected, is an easily available one. It is shown that an integrated technical computing environment such as Matlab, can do the' preliminary small craft design with the inclusion of ergonomic criteria. This demonstrates also that the methodology developed in this study can be implemented and extended easily by others. The design process used in this study will be referred as "Matship". The ergonomic criteria, implemented in Matship, include constraints on RMS motion amplitudes and accelerations, peak motion responses and ergonomic criteria that relate maintaining one's balance onboard of a ship to ship motions. In the last one, an empirical relation, developed by Kimura, is used between the first moments of the spectra of vertical and longitudinal accelerations on the deck and human balance. The study shows the effect of human factors on the principle dimensions of the boats and their operational speed. The preliminary results reported in this thesis show that seakeeping ergonomic criteria can be implemented explicitly into the preliminary design of a small craft, for crew safety and passenger comfort. This thesis presents a methodology to include seakeeping ergonomic criteria in the preliminary design process and discusses its effects on the design parameters such as principal dimensions, power requirement, cost etc. The effects of these criteria on the final design can be quantified in terms of principal dimensions or monetary terms. Matship presents a methodology to include ergonomic criteria in the preliminary design and discusses their effects on the ship parameters. This study suggests that length restriction imposed on fishing vessels in Canada and elsewhere may cause unnecessary risk to crew of smaller vessels and should be further studied. The Matlab files used in this study are available at University of British Columbia's (UBC) Mechanical Engineering web site, http://www.mech.ubc.ca/.