High speed marine craft motion mitigation using flexible hull design

High speed marine craft motions can be severe and concerns regarding human performance and safety are widespread. The motions can reduce crew abilities to perform tasks and can result in injury. This is especially of concern for military and/or rescue operations and means to reduce or mitigate against motion exposures are required to protect the occupants. In this paper the motionmitigation provided by various ‘flexible’ hull systems during a slam event is examined numerically, following an extended introduction describing highspeedmarinecraftmotion effects and whole body vibration and repeated shock. Introducing hull flexibility to isolate the occupants from the externally induced disturbances can either exacerbate or alleviate the problem depending on the desig