Home

SD-05 Advanced Ships and Craft

SNAME's T&R Panel SD-5 (Advanced Ships & Craft) is dedicated to the technology, design and engineering of ships and craft offering capabilities well beyond those achievable by conventional designs. This is generally taken to mean significantly higher speed or significantly enhanced ability to operate in high waves. A common term for them is "advanced marine vehicle" or AMV.
 
These higher levels of capability can be provided across a broad range of configurations: planing craft, fast multi-hull designs (e.g., catamarans and trimarans), hydrofoils, SWATH (small waterplane area twin hull) ships, WIG (wing-in-ground-effect) craft, air cushion vehicles (ACVs), surface-effect ships (SESs), hybrids of these, and novel concepts not yet envisioned. Seaplanes incorporate many AMV elements and are also included. In size, these ships and craft are generally at the smaller end of the scale, but not always: a large ship that attains high speed or seakeeping by means of an unconventional hullform or appendages may also be included.
 
No ship can be made to do everything well. Conventional designs tend to have a relatively balanced set of capabilities, but AMVs tend to be "unbalanced" in that they attain higher performance in some aspects of their functioning only by accepting reduced performance in others. For example, higher speed generally comes at the cost of reduced payload and range due to greater propulsive power and fuel consuming a disproportionate share of the weight-carrying capability. It also drives use of lighter materials and of engines and motors with higher power density. And most AMVs are inherently configured to use dynamic or powered lift to raise them up in the water to reduce the power required to push through it.
 
AMVs tend to have niche applications where their particular strengths have special value but their weaknesses don't unduly compromise their performance, and currently-operating examples of all of them can be seen in many places around the world. Although the costs to acquire, operate, support and maintain them tend to be relatively high, they can still be economically justified in appropriate applications. This may be especially true with uncrewed and autonomous craft, which need not provide space and support for crew or limit motions and accelerations for them.
 
The relevant technology for SD-5 extends beyond these ships and craft to include the materials and subsystems in them, the tools and techniques used in researching and designing them, and the methods employed to analyze them and select the best from among competing designs. It may also include the particular ways they are built, operated and supported.
The Panel provides a forum for discussion, sharing, and dissemination of information about new AMV technologies and developments. It encourages research to extend those technologies, promotes the writing of papers and reports documenting them, and works to educate the technical community, potential users, and the public about their capabilities and applications.
 
SD-5's membership includes recognized experts in designing and engineering AMVs, in their supporting technologies, and in their operational employments. Among them are government and private company employees, independent professionals, and academics and other researchers.
 
SD-5 especially welcomes younger professionals and students, who have newer knowledge and insights to contribute while being unburdened by knowing what can't be done. They often come with experience using design and analysis tools older members could only imagine
before. In a way, AMVs represent future-oriented technology that is particularly suited to them and will develop along with them.

If you are interested in joining this committee, please contact the Committee Chair

Committee Members