Structural Design of a Composite Trimaran

This paper presents a project of a composite trimaran structure, designed and built for competing at the Hydro Contest 2016 competition at Geneva Lake. Concept of the contest is to raise the awareness of tomorrow’s engineers, industrialists, opinion leaders and the public of what is at stake with regard to energy efficiency in the sea transportation of goods and passengers. In addition, to be the laboratory of tomorrow’s boats, particularly enabling the most innovative ideas to be developed in collaboration with the industrial partners. Designed boats must have technological innovations enabling them to achieve the most efficient use of energy. Therefore, the goal was to design, construct lightweight structure, within simple closed rules, with a satisfactory stiffens, and strength as well as to strive for more efficient transport, which means higher speed with minimal energy consumption. An analysis of project variants was made with regard to the hull shape, material, and technology of the fabrication and for the adopted variant, a computer structure model was developed, and the FEA was carried out. The structure is divided into three main sections analysed individually: hulls, front wing and rear wing along with rudder. Calculation was made for the worst load case, i.e. mass transfer, while wings were analysed at the highest advancing speed. The boat has structurally met all requirements since there were no structural problems in testing and competing.