Case Study: Rolls‑Royce achieves improved SWATH SOV seakeeping and optimized hull design with CAESES

Rolls Royce - Customer Case Study

Rolls Royce set out to investigate an innovative SWATH (Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull) concept as a Service Operation Vessel (SOV) to compete in the fast‑growing European offshore wind O&M market, where shipowners demand lower costs, higher efficiency and improved seakeeping compared with conventional monohulls. The vendor CAESES was used (via FRIENDSHIP SYSTEMS) to provide parametric modeling, mesh generation and integration with seakeeping tools for the study.

Using CAESES, the team built fully parametric SWATH geometry, integrated NEWDRIFT+ for seakeeping, and ran a multi‑stage optimization workflow (single‑variable studies, Dakota RSM, exhaustive searches and fine‑tuning) to evaluate hundreds of design variants and post‑process RAOs, forces and moments automatically. The optimized SWATH designs showed reduced heave, roll and pitch in multiple sea conditions—indicating a larger operational window than longer monohulls—while CAESES’ automated post‑processing significantly sped up evaluation; the study also flagged higher wave drift forces and the need for further propulsion and stability analysis.

Rolls Royce