Ship design is a complex process. And a modern ship is a complex technical object, expensive and in service for many years. It is therefore necessary to avoid making major mistakes in its construction. In addition, the complexity of the ship leads to a long development period of sometimes several years.
In order to speed up design and avoid large errors, designers often use technical solutions which have been applied to previously built ships and proved to be good in operation. Such technical solutions are called prototypes.
How to use a prototype?
A prototype can be a previously built ship with minor modifications.
But more often several prototypes are used when designing a ship, as it is not always possible to find a prototype which meets all the requirements for a new construction. In this case, other prototypes can be used for individual technical solutions.
For example, a theoretical drawing of a prototype vessel is used to design the hull form, as the seaworthiness of the prototype vessel is close to the required seaworthiness of the designed vessel.
At the same time, the general arrangement of this prototype vessel does not meet the current requirements for crew habitability. Therefore, the designer may use another prototype ship when developing the general arrangement of the crew accommodation of the vessel under design.
In ship design practice, the concept of a prototype is also widely used at the early stages of design, including the selection of major ship elements. In these cases, based on the provisions of ship design theory, the designer uses data from a suitable prototype ship to obtain the numerical characteristics required for the solution of his tasks.