Commercial Open Sea Hovercraft

My university third year individual project was a design study for a large car carrying hovercraft as a possible replacement for the recently retired SR.N4 Mk3 Mountbatten class hovercraft that used to ply the Dover - Calais route. The size of craft was chosen to be about the same as the Incat wave piercing catamarans currently serving this route as well as many other potential routes for the craft around the world. The design finally arrived at scores over the competing catamarans in the following areas:

Turn around time - The hovercraft does not need to spend time docking, it can simply drive up the beach and turn the engines off. As both ends of the craft are on dry land loading can commence at one end while the previous vehicles are still disembarking at the other.

Facilities - The hovercraft can operate from an unprepared beach and run at speed over shallow water and other hazards to shipping making it particularly suitable for use in areas that do not have well established port facilities and maintained deep water channels.

Maintenance - The use of light weight gas turbines and sensible design allows for rapid replacement of any item of machinery in a matter of hours giving higher serviceability. The hovercraft never needs to be dry docked and the use of marine grade aluminium and composites throughout means that painting is optional.

Speed - My final design is capable of keeping pace with the catamarans in any weather but on calm days the hovercraft has a clear advantage. For the installed power and maximum weight the craft should be capable of achieving 70kts, however, in order to save structural weight (and therefore fuel consumption) the design speed was limited to 50kts. The excess power is required to maintain speed in rough weather.

Downlad GA (AutoCAD 2005)

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