Fastship and Delftship for Naval Architects

by Charles Roring in Manokwari of West Papua - Indonesia

I have just downloaded a ship's hull development software called Delftship. This software is developed for naval architects who are working on ship design offices or students of naval architecture around the world. In my previous article, I said that I use Fastship to develop ship's hull. Fastship is made by Proteus Engineering while Delfship is by Delftship BV in the Netherlands.

Personally, the word Delft is a familiar word for me. It is the town where Delft University of Technology is located. This institution is very famous in my campus when I was a student of Teknik Perkapalan of Universitas Pattimura Ambon. My final assignment was the propeller design of a giant open hatch bulk carrier. I had to read books related to Ship's propulsion. One of the books which I used as my main reference was "Resistance, Propulsion and Steering of Ships." Although it is a very old book, I consider it as a very important book which students of naval architecture should read to widen their knowledge on ship design. The propeller data which is presented in the book is still valid at the moment. I used Troost B4-BP-d Series whereas the resistance is calculated using a method developed by J. Holtrop and G.G. J.Mennen.

Back to the hull development softwares, the availability of the free Delftship has given great opportunities to students of naval architecture around the world to experience an industry standard development of hull form at their own PC or laptops. Software companies which offer such scheme have indirectly promoted their software to young engineers who in the future will become professional ship designers and decision makers in maritime industry in their respective countries.

I will write more about these two softwares in the near future. In Fastship, besides it is a lines-plan software, it can calculate the resistance of ship. How about Delfship? Well, its manual says that it can calculate the GZ curve, stability curve, bending moment and shear force of a ship.