Longitudinal stability of WIG

Abstract

For many centuries man has been travelling over the worlds seas at ever increasing speeds. New generations of ships are often faster than the ones they replace. New technologies were introduced in order to make the speed increase possible. Conventional displacement mono hulls could no longer keep up and multi hulls and planning hulls were introduced. Even higher speeds were achieved with hydrofoils and air cushion vehicles. The practical maximum speed of all marine craft mentioned so far lies around 100 km/h. The drawback of the recent trend for high speed marine craft is the increased power requirement and fuel consumption. It is very unlikely that any "conventional" marine craft will be able to operate at much higher speeds with acceptable fuel efficiency.