Is the Oasis of the Seas Cruise Ship safe for the marine environment?

The Oasis of the Seas and many other cruise ships have often been accused by environmentalists of polluting the ocean. It is understandable that the sea and the beautiful coral reef is a fragile marine environment. Organic and inorganic wastes can cause harmful impact to fish and animals that live in the coral reef areas.

Passengers traveling on Oasis of the Seas and other cruise ships should be well informed that they must not throw plastic wastes into the sea. Naval architects who designed ships know that they need to add sewage water processing plant inside the shipboard systems so that the sewage water can easily be decomposed by tiny marine animals that do the job.

As a matter of fact, cruise industries and other merchant ship operators are not the only ones that should be accused of polluting the environment. Most of the plastic wastes that are now drifting on the open seas come from coastal cities and towns in all continents of the earth. To stop marine pollution is to teach city and town dwellers to stop throwing their garbage to the sea.

Everyday millions of tons of domestic and industrial wastes are flowing to the sea from coastal cities around the globe. If these wastes can be recycled into other useful products then the marine environment especially the coral reefs will be in better condition.

Naval architects, marine engineers and operators of cruise ships have done their best to preserve the coral reef and marine environment. We earn money from exploiting the sea, so we know we must not destroy it.

It is also the responsibility of authorities of coastal cities and towns to stop wastes from flowing into the sea. They have to build recycling plants to process the wastes so that the burden which tiny marine animals have to do to neutralize the pollutants will be lighter.  by Charles Roring

Can Archicad be used in ship design?

Can I use Archicad to design marine structure such as cruise ship the Oasis of the Seas? Archicad is a BIM software that is usually used by architects for designing houses, and buildings. The latest version is Archicad 14. I personally used to try the software to design simple floor plan for a small house. What I really like about this cad software is that we can create 2D drawings simultaneously with the 3D drawings of the house that we are designing. To visualize our concept house from 2D to 3D, we only need to click view in 3D and within a few seconds we can see how the house will look like. Archicad also has a lot of items in its library from furniture items such as tables, chairs and beds to home construction components such as windows, doors and stairs. Another software that is the competitor of Archicad is Revit Architecture. Revit is developed by Autodesk a giant CAD software company whereas Archicad is by Graphisoft.

After studying the Archicad tutorials for a few months, I conclude that this BIM software can only be used for visualising the interior of ship. It is not suitable for designing hull form due to various technical aspects such as resistance and propulsion, hydrostatic and stability calculation that Archicad does not have. Archicad can calculate how much material that will be needed, for example, for building a wooden house in cubic meter. But it cannot calculate that center of gravity of the ship and center of buoyancy of the submerged hull of a vessel. Although Archicad can create very beautiful interior design of a suite room of a cruise ship such as the Oasis of the Seas or the Allure of the Seas, it is lack of features that are vital in ship design.

So, if you are asked to design the interior part of a cruise ship, then it is ok to use Archicad. But if you are asked to do the basic design of a hull form including her hydrostatic and resitance as well as propulsion properties, then I must recommend other software that can do the job for you. They are Maxsurf, Delfship or CATIA. If you don't want to spend money on buying the license of the software, an alternative solution is Freeship. Delftship and Freeship have similar interface. The professional version of Delftship has more complicated features for calculating damaged stability of a ship. I personally have used Delftship and written some tutorials or explanation in this blog. You can find them in this blog. I like Delfship because although its size is small it can be used to create hull form complete with the hydrostatic feature of the ship.  by Charles Roring

Also read:

• Designing Simple Bedroom with Archicad


• How to draw floorplan with Archicad


• Archicad 8

Catamaran Yachts

Catamaran is a type of high speed marine vehicle that is designed to have two identical hulls. The slender hulls of a catamaran make the speed of the boat faster compared to a mono hull boat with similar displacement. Because the boat has bigger width, its deck area is larger and suitable for placing passengers rooms, or equipment for research or defense. In recent years, the design of sailing yachts uses catamaran form for the hull type. The following Youtube video shows how a catamaran yachts powered with engines on both sides of the hull move on the surface of the water.

Catamaran yachts are now designed and built by naval architecture firms to meet the demand of pleasure boats that have higher speed with greater stability and at the same time larger deck area for passengers or guests accommodation. Because of the wider deck area a big catamaran can have rooms as spacious and as luxurious as the Oasis of the Seas rooms. Oasis of the Seas have rooms in the superstructure are stacked on port and starboard sides of the cruise ship. Typical catamaran accommodation rooms are concentrated in the superstructure that is constructed on the "bridge" between the two hulls of the boat. Catamaran also has smaller draft which makes it capable of moving in high speed in shallow water. Boats with smaller draft are not installed with controllable pitch propellers but jet foil. With jet foil, water from the bow area under the hull is sucked into a tunnel where there is a propeller there. The propeller will accelerate and propel the water out of the hull creating a reaction thrust from the water that pushes the boat to move forward.

Catamaran with small draft is a very important capability that a pleasure boat must have in order to bring its passengers to lagoon or white sandy beaches whose water depth is sometimes less than five meters. The boat can be powered with large sail as catamaran sailboat or with internal combustion engine or both. The materials for building a small size catamaran range from wood to fiberglass. Sometimes aluminum is also used. All these materials are suitable for boats. For larger boats, steel is usually used.

Naval architects can use such software as Delftship or Maxsurf to develop hull forms of catamaran. The lastest Defltship free provides hull design features but only limited to symmetrical form. Designers who plan to design catamaran or other hull whose forms are not symmetrical must buy the professional edition. BIM software such as Archicad or Revit architecture can only be used for the interior design of the ship. Archicad does not have features where naval architect can use for calculating hydrostatic as well as resistance and propulsion properties of a ship.

Also read:

• Trimaran a fast boat


• Swath