Paid FoundationCertificate

Naval Architecture for Performance

The naval-architecture foundations under every fleet performance number: hull form coefficients, model testing and power prediction, the propeller and its marriage to hull and engine, hull-girder strength, ice class and underwater noise: taught for the people who use the numbers, not the people who draw the lines.

Lessons
9
Quiz questions
72
Exercises
2 (10 min)
Calculators
2
Time
About 83 min
Price
€159+ VAT
Certificate
Graded final exam, then a PDF certificate with a number anyone can verify
Who it's for
Technical superintendents, performance analysts and fleet engineers who work with speed-power curves, sea-trial reports and propulsion data every week and want the design-side physics underneath them.
Assumed knowledge
Our course Ship Resistance Fundamentals is the ideal warm-up: it introduces the five calm-water resistance components this course builds on. Comfort with basic algebra helps; nothing beyond it is assumed.
Taught by

Christos Papandreou

CEO & Founder, Blue Autonomy

  • Naval architect and marine engineer, National Technical University of Athens
  • 15 years of experience in fleet performance and operational data
  • Chief Scientific Officer, NEMO, previously DeepSea Technologies, StormGeo, Athenian Sea Carriers, PwC

Part of the Ship Technology Foundations specialisation.

What you will be able to do

By the end of the course. Each outcome names the lessons that deliver it, and the final exam samples every one of them.

  1. Describe a hull's hydrodynamic personality in the designer's numbers: main dimensions, block and other form coefficients, slenderness ratio and Froude number. Lesson 1
  2. Explain why Froude and Reynolds similarity cannot both hold at model scale, how form factors and the correlation allowance bridge tank to ship, and how statistical power-prediction methods (Holtrop–Mennen worked as the classic) estimate power before a ship exists, including where empirical methods stop and CFD takes over. Lessons 2, 3
  3. Explain how blade sections generate thrust as rotating wings, read KT/KQ/open-water-efficiency curves against advance ratio, and name the three costs of cavitation. Lesson 4
  4. Explain wake fraction, thrust deduction, hull and relative-rotative efficiency, and assemble the propulsive chain that links effective power to delivered power. Lesson 5
  5. Read an engine load diagram against a propeller curve, distinguish light from heavy running, and explain how sea, engine and light-running margins protect the engine–propeller match as hull and machinery age. Lesson 6
  6. Explain the design realities an operator inherits: still-water and wave bending of the hull girder (hogging, sagging, section modulus, rule loads), what an ice class buys and costs across the Finnish-Swedish and Polar Class families, and why propeller cavitation dominates underwater radiated noise, including where quietening and efficiency measures overlap. Lessons 7, 8, 9

Performance work runs on numbers a naval architect chose years before the first noon report: the hull form, the propeller, the engine match, the structural limits. Most of the people who live with those choices were never shown the reasoning behind them.

This course closes that gap. It starts where a design starts, the handful of coefficients that sketch a hull's whole hydrodynamic personality, and walks forward in the order the physics stacks up: how model tests and empirical methods predict power before a ship exists; how a propeller makes thrust in open water and what changes when it lives behind a hull; how engine and propeller are matched, and how that match slowly sours as the hull fouls. Then the design realities an operator inherits get their say: the hull girder in a real seaway, ice class, and the underwater noise a propeller radiates.

Nothing here repeats the Ship Resistance Fundamentals course: that one names the resistance components; this one explains where the numbers come from and what designers and superintendents can do about them. The seaway's own bill is also deliberately absent: added resistance from waves has two dedicated courses of its own, and this course only points at them. It feeds directly into Vessel Performance in Practice, where these foundations become monitoring method.

The opening lesson is free to read as a sample.

What the course covers

  1. The Shape of a Ship, in Numbers 13 min + exercise
  2. Scaling Laws and What a Towing Tank Actually Measures 8 min
  3. Predicting Power Before the Ship Exists 9 min
  4. The Propeller I: How Thrust Is Made 8 min
  5. The Propeller II: Living Behind a Hull 14 min + exercise
  6. Matching Engine to Propeller 8 min
  7. The Hull Girder: A Ship Is a Beam 8 min
  8. Ice Class and Cold Operations 7 min
  9. Underwater Radiated Noise: The Quiet Design Requirement 8 min

€159 + VAT

€197.16 including 24% VAT, which is what an individual in the EU pays. Outside the EU no VAT is added. A company in another EU country pays the net price once its VAT number is confirmed in VIES, the EU's register; a company in Greece pays the 24%. Checkout shows the total before you pay.

Paid once, for one person, for as long as the Academy runs: every lesson, the 2 Excel workbooks, the final examination and the certificate. Part of the Ship Technology Foundations specialisation, which costs less than its courses bought one at a time.

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All prices · Refunds: 7 days, unless you have started

Common questions

What exactly is included?

9 lessons (about 83 minutes in total), 72 quiz questions with explained answers, and 2 working Excel calculators: Hull coefficients calculator, Propulsive-chain (QPC) calculator.

How much does it cost?

€159 plus VAT, paid once: €197.16 with 24% VAT, which is what an individual in the EU pays; outside the EU no VAT is added, and a company in another EU country with a VAT number valid in VIES pays the net price. That buys every lesson, the 2 Excel workbooks, the final examination and the certificate, for one person, for as long as the Academy runs. The course is also part of the Ship Technology Foundations specialisation, which costs less than its courses bought one at a time. Everything else is on the pricing page.

Is there work to do, or is it only reading?

2 lessons carry a required exercise, about 10 minutes of hands-on work in total. You download that lesson's Excel workbook, follow the numbered steps against the numbers the lesson states, then change one input and watch the answer move. The exercises are where the method stops being something you have read and becomes something you can run; the stated course time includes them.

Do I get a certificate?

Yes. The course ends with a graded final exam, marked on our server rather than in your browser: you see your score and which questions you got wrong, but not the answers, because the questions are drawn from a pool. Pass it and you get a PDF certificate in your name, with a certificate number on it.

That number is the point. Anyone you show the certificate to can check it themselves at academy.blueautonomy.gr/verify, with no account and no email to us: the page states the name, the course and the date we issued it. A certificate nobody can verify is a decorated PDF, and we would rather issue one that stands up.

Can I preview the course?

Yes: the first lesson, The Shape of a Ship, in Numbers, is free to read in full. It is a real lesson, not a trailer: same depth, same quiz.

Do I need prior knowledge?

Our course Ship Resistance Fundamentals is the ideal warm-up: it introduces the five calm-water resistance components this course builds on. Comfort with basic algebra helps; nothing beyond it is assumed.