Study on the Feasibility of Using Low-Cost Techniques and Tools to Manufacture a Scale Model of a Ship for Maneuvering Experiments

This article studies the feasibility of using low-cost materials, techniques, and tools to manufacture a 1/100-scale model of a VLCC. For this purpose, three main aspects were considered to reduce the production costs: 1) the bypass to the fabrication of a mold, by building directly the final hull with mid-density fiber wood; 2) the use of a 3 degrees of freedom computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine to cut and shape the pieces of the hull, which can be easily rented at affordable prices; 3) the automation as much as possible of the process to avoid contracting highly skilled personnel to do manual tasks, which would increase substantially the fabrication costs. The article is based on the practical case study of the fabrication of the KVLCC2 (KRISO Very Large Crude Carrier 2) scale model, which is used to describe the digital models, the milling process, and the finishing work. At the end, the validation of the model is done by comparing the final physical hull surface with the original digital one. This study is mainly directed to small maritime research centers and/or universities, which are interested in performing maneuvering experiments with homemade ship scale models.