“That makes them very difficult to use for crewed vessels, because you have to spend a lot of time optimising the trim of the vessel in a way that accounts for the movement of people. If crew and passengers never moved, that would be great. Better still is if you have no people onboard in the first place.” SWATHs present certain integration challenges, given how much mass must be placed below the waterline. Mulcahy and Mike proffer the example of how painstaking design would be if Pioneer ran on direct-drive diesel powertrains inside its demi-hulls: one would need to determine the ideal points for inlets and exhaust, and engineer a means for easily accessing the engine for maintenance. “The ability to store battery energy cost-effectively and space-economically for electric powertrains has been maybe the single-biggest change for marine engineering in the last decade, enabling vessels like ours that are electrically driven, but reasonably agnostic to the energy source,” Mulcahy says. “So, range extenders can be placed quite far from the drive system, sparing us from needing to miniaturise or deconstruct things like fuel cells or ICEs for integration’s sake.” Despite the non-traditional nature of SWATHs, John Kecsmar’s work on Pioneer began with quite traditional hand-drawings – rather than starting in CAD, such as Ansys, OnShape, SolidWorks and Maxsurf, although these four were later used to optimise Pioneer’s design in combination with lessons learned at Southampton. To build a ship Aluminium alloy was used in the early scale prototyping phases due to its workability: it can be bent or cut to enact iterative changes, even if one has already riveted it onto a chassis, with little impact on structural integrity. ACUA Ocean had then intended to switch to composites for the final build prototype seen today, but pivoted back to aluminium alloys after the benefits of working with AMC convinced them to do so. Rugged reliability and optimal performance define the 200WX-IPX7. Over 1 million hours of flawless nautical operation on USVs, including SeaTrac’s, and buoys prove its integrity. Inquire how AIRMAR can meet your integration requirements. • Compact, ultrasonic multisensor • Dynamic wind speed and direction • Air temperature and wind chill • Barometric pressure • GPS position, SOG, COG • Three-axis solid state compass with dynamic stabilization • Three-axis rate gyro for rate of turn • Best-in-class pitch and roll accuracy • IPX7 waterproof rating 200WX-IPX7 AIRMAR.COM Contact [email protected] Photo Courtesy of SeaTrac ...one million nautical hours Proven Performance UncrewedSysTech_IPX7_ProvenPerf_SeaTrac_Jan25_hlfVert.indd 1 12/12/24 1:27 PM
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