Lifting Body Ships - Overview
 
Through its three decades of work on advanced hull forms, Navatek has become the recognized world leader in the design, construction and testing of underwater lifting bodies for ships and small craft. Attached to, or incorporated into, various parent hull forms (monohull or multi-hull), lifting bodies are underwater appendages with a cambered foil section that generate dynamic lift at speed. They are characterized by substantial volume, large planform areas, and low lift coefficients. Using technology demonstrators, Navatek validated at sea the following benefits of ships/craft equipped with underwater lifting bodies:
  • Improved seakindliness (quality of behaving comfortably at sea), demonstrated through measured low amplitude motions and low acceleration motions at both low and high speeds.
  • Improved seakeeping (ability to maintain normal operations in a seaway), demonstrated through reduced added resistance, reduced slamming, and improved course-keeping. Lifting body technology can reduce ship motions by half.
  • Higher speed efficiency, demonstrated through a measured higher lift-to-drag for the parent hull equipped with an underwater lifting body compared to the parent hull  without a lifting body. Lifting body technology can reduce ship drag, resulting in a reduction in fuel consumption by up to 20 percent.
  • Higher operating speeds in a seaway, due to reduced motions produced by the passive damping mechanism of the underwater lifting body (which can be further augmented by Navatek's ARES adaptive ride enhancement system).
  • Higher payloads, produced by the added displacement of the lifting body; and the smaller structural weight fraction of a shorter parent hull
  • Scalability, demonstrating the broad applicability and efficiency of underwater lifting bodies through the construction and testing at sea of both small (52 tons) and large (320 tons) demonstrator craft.

Navatek has researched, designed, built and tested at sea demonstration craft equipped with a:

  • Mid Lifting Body (MIDFOIL and SEAFLYER)
  • Bow Lifting Body (BLB-70/65; MDA-60; proposed BLB-160)
  • Aft Lifting Body (SLED-36; USV-36/USV 11-M; CAT-40/Interceptor 40; BLADERUNNER-51 ALB)
  • Tandem Lifting Body (HDV-100, and conceptual design for TLB-290)