Objectives Due to its excellent seakeeping, rapidity and stability, Trimaran Small Waterplane Area Center Hull(TriSWACH)has an increasing number of applications in both civil vessels and warships. However, the laws of resistance of different submerged body shapes and side-hull configurations at different speeds still require research. As model tests are time-consuming and expensive, and cannot cover all potential hulls, numerical calculation based on STAR-CCM + is becoming increasingly preferred.
Methods With the free surface effect consideration, STAR-CCM+ is validated to be practical for TriSWACH resistance prediction. The resistance performance is calculated with different side-hull configurations, including longitudinal and transverse, of circular submerged body shapes under the Fr series.
Results As the results indicate, with the increase of speed, when the side-hull is arranged behind and moves closer to the main hull, the total resistance of TriSWACH is significantly lower than that of traditional trimarans, in the range of Fr=0.338~0.494.
Conclusions The findings in this paper can provide useful references for future TriSWACH design.