Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Dimensioning a merchant ship
 With the program GetxoNaval

GetxoNaval program  objective is to  allow making  quick, approximate calculations necessary to define the dimensions of a merchant ship. This program can be used basically in two different ways:

  • To make an estimation of the main ship dimensions based on  its size, defined, for example, by deadweight, number of containers, volume  of cargo spaces etc.
  • To make a calculation of different particulars (deadweight, speed etc.) of a ship whose  main dimensions are known, either  because they have been defined in the previous point, or for being a known ship but one or several of her capacities are unknown.

Clicking  following link you can access to the program GetxoNaval  hosted  in Google-Sites.


GetxoNaval program allows to work in both  indicated ways, always on the  base that we are dealing with preliminary calculations, very fast, what  allows a designer to analyze different alternative ship dimensionings in a very short time.


In this program constant references are address  to the book “The basic desing of merchant ships (El Proyecto básico del buque mercante)”, whose authors are Ricardo Alvariño, Juan José Azpíroz and Manuel Meizoso, and was published by the Publishing Fund  of Naval Architecture, being now at its second edition. Many of the considerations and calculation methods dealt with in GetxoNaval are explained and detailed in this book. All the modules in the program are written in Spanish and in English.


GetxoNaval program is hosted  in Google-Sites for its free use online, but at the moment it is not fully finished, what  I hope to do incorporating at least following modules:

  •  Longitudinal strength
  •  Powering,  by the  Holtrop method
  •  Container ship Capacity and stability

Other already present modules will be progressively revised, improving their range and precision.


Most of the modules contained in GetxoNaval were  previously and successively published in my blogs “Oteando from Getxo (Scanning from Getxo)” and “GetxoShip” (in English). I do not recommend to use the modules published in my blogs because those  included in GetxoNaval are more  updated and complete.


No comments: