Full-Scale Design Evaluation of the Visby Class Corvette

摘要

The paper considers full-scale trials that has been performed to evaluate the structural design of the Visby Class corvette. In particular evaluation of the applied design loads is discussed. A method which enables detailed experimental evaluation of the hydrodynamic loads on high-speed craft hull structures is presented. The method involves pressure measurements, reconstruction of momentary spatial pressure distributions from the discrete point measurements, calculation of panel loads by integration of the reconstructed pressure, and derivation of statistical extreme values in parity with the design loads. The presented method has been successfully used to evaluate the Visby design and it is concluded to be an efficient tool. In the paper application of the method is demonstrated on full-scale trial data. Experimentally derived panel loads are shown to be distinctly higher than the minimum requirements according to classification rules. Future application of the method is discussed, for example how it can be used to evaluate and improve existing semi-empirical design methods as well as direct calculation methods.