Cruising ships

An approximation to their dimensions

In my post of April 8, 2010 in this blog, entitled "Preliminary dimensioning of merchant ships," I included a procedure to calculate a first approximation of most significant particulars of 9 different merchant ship types, but I omitted a very important one, which is the passengers cruising vessel (hereinafter Cruising Vessel (CV)). One friend suggested me to extend the procedure to include the CV, because of the interest presently have these vessels, which are among the few that can successfully compete in Europe with eastern shipyards. Following this suggestion I have prepared a preliminary CV's dimensioning procedure, but I warn from just now that the data I base on have been obtained from Internet sites and some of them are not quite reliable, as I shall comment further on.

Estimating ship's powering 

L.K. Kupras' method 

At the initial stage of a ship's design a propulsion power estimation is to be done to ascertain that the vessel can sail at the specified speed. As the ship design development progresses, models tests are usually performed in a hydrodynamics tank, which serve to optimize the hull form, adjust the propeller(s) design and ensure the speed/power prediction for a proper choice of the propelling engine(s).

¿ How much does a ship weigh ?

Archimedes' principle

This question is deliberately ambiguous and what intends to ask is how can you get the weight of a ship, referring, of course, to a large ship, that can not be placed on a balance. It also refers to the weight of a real floating ship  already built and it is not considering here the weight estimation during the ship's design phase.