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Confident Vessel Development

Naval Architects appreciate NavCad’s combination of efficiency and accurate results, leading to better business and design decisions early in the project and throughout the vessel’s life.

Tools to Confirm Confidence

The complete Vessel-Propulsor-Drive system simulation is critical for naval architects as they develop designs for challenging vessel requirements. HydroComp’s signature tools for hydrodynamic and propulsion system simulation – NavCad and PropElements – provide naval architectural teams of all types and disciplines with the tools to confidently evaluate and optimize a ship’s Vessel-Propulsor-Drive system and its individual components.

Without a functional Vessel-Propulsor-Drive system, a ship is just a buoy. For transit vessels, the success of our clients’ business requires the efficient movement of goods or people via watercraft. For pushing craft, customers also need the effective development of focused thrust. A designer’s ability to meet these goals is the difference between attracting attention for a failure at sea trial or being recognized for consistent success in meeting your client’s business objectives.

Energy Efficiency

Companies with an interest in advancing their reputation for design excellence call on PropElements as part of propeller studies for finding efficiency or insuring a propeller is cavitation-free and operationally-quiet. Our software enables naval architects and engineers to make faster and more accurate propulsion and powering predictions, and ensure propellers are appropriate and functional for a particular vessel.

Government and Military Applications

Government and military engineers, designers and shipyards utilize NavCad to evaluate designs and make resistance and propulsion predictions for craft from high-speed littoral patrol boats to the largest combatants and support vessels. Readiness is essential, and NavCad provides the ability to assess craft having difficulty achieving expected performance via its ability to conduct forensic analyses to better understand the problem and proposed solutions. PropElements assists in propeller design for advanced craft, and is a key tool for the design of highest-performing propellers and vessels.

Optimization of Vessels and Propellers

Call on NavCad’s drag-reduction utility for designer-guided optimization of principal hull shape parameters, or use the higher-order Analytical Distributed Volume Method (a Premium feature) to drill into how local aspects of hull shape affect drag. Propeller optimization starts with NavCad’s system-level thrust-power matching, and is refined with a PropElements wake-adapted optimized design.

Hydrodynamic and Propulsion System Design Tools

NavCad by Hydrocomp

NavCad®

The flagship framework for entire resistance, propulsion, mission profile, and optimized performance design tasks

PropElements by HydroComp

PropElements®

HydroComp’s “design for performance” propeller tool to customize and optimize a propeller for a specific ship or vessel type

PropCad by HydroComp

PropCad®

The industry’s most popular commercial tool for propeller “design for manufacture”

PropExpert by Hydrocomp

PropExpert®

This “propeller application sizing” tool is the favorite of marine propeller, engine, and drive companies from main-office OEMs through their distribution pipeline