The Development of a Planning Boat Model and Environmental Measurements for Free Running Model Tests

For decades, the performance and efficiency of High Speed Craft (HSC) have been tested and evaluated in towing tanks; these tests are performed under ideal conditions. During towed testing the scaled model is often only free to move in heave and pitch and the effect of surge cannot be evaluated. Self propelled tests are rare meaning  the drag, noise and turbulence of the thruster propellers are not considered. This paper presents a detailed step by step workflow of designing and manufacturing a self-propelled (HSC) to be tested in a calm water free running test in the Offshore Technology Research Center (OTRC) wave basin in Texas A&M University. The paper shows the hull parametric design, thruster and propeller selection and the data acquisition system design. The study includes a quantitative and qualitative comparison for the effect of the propeller hull interaction, results are compared with exciting towing tank data for the same hull geometry. An experimental  straight  forward motion step response is implemented to identify the vehicle speed transfer function for closed loop forward speed controller design. The paper also presents the use of  computer vision applications in the experiment measurements such as the Visual-SLAM algorithm for the accurate 6-DOF HSC motion tracking and the use of the stereo-vision for studying the wave pattern downstream of the hull quantitatively and qualitatively.