In the marine environment, wake wash from passing vessels can be detrimenta
l to a shoreline environment, damage shoreline property and disturb or dama
ge other marine operations. Slowdowns to prevent such impact can hamper or
curtail high-speed vessel operations that depend on speed for successful se
rvice. To prevent this failure, low-wash vessel designs are needed and succ
ess must be assured before significant dollar investments are made. This pa
per describes:
establishment of "no harm" wash criteria,
prediction of wash using computational fluid dynamics for various speeds of
high-speed aluminum catamarans,
techniques of measurement and analysis of the wash from actual vessels, and
agreement between wash predictions and wash measurements.
This paper documents a successful program which Washington State Ferries us
ed to procure new, high-speed environmentally friendly passenger ferries fo
r operation on Puget Sound.