The Corsair is an air cushion catamaran . The vehicle, known as the “Surface Effect Ship” (SES), was developed, designed and built by Blohm + Voss in 1989 as a test vehicle in order to gain experience for use as a fast RoPax ferry as well as a police or customs vehicle .
The air-cushion catamaran has a tunneled structure and floats on two hulls. With a length of 35.3 m, a width of 13 m and a draft of 2.3 m (as a displacer), the Corsair has a displacement of 170 t. The space between the hulls at the bow and the stern is largely sealed by flexible aprons made of rubber material in order to keep losses from the air cushion as low as possible. When air cushion operation with blowers an air cushion in the cavity between the hulls and the skirts generated, whereby the catamaran from the water rises and the depth is reduced to about one meter. The maximum speed in air cushion operation with a draft of 0.8 m is around 45 kn for the Corsair . It is driven by two controllable pitch propellers located in the partial hulls .
history
Surface Effect Ships are hybrid boats that consist of a combination of a catamaran with an additional air cushion (hovercraft). The Corsair was examined and optimized as a model in the large circulation tank of the Research Institute for Hydraulic Engineering and Shipbuilding (VWS) in Berlin. From 1989 onwards, extensive tests were carried out with the original, particularly in the shallow waters of the Baltic and North Seas. Many scientific measurements were carried out and documented. In addition to these measurement trips, further trips to present the air-cushion catamaran were made up to the year 2000.
J. Wessel: Design of air cushion catamarans. In: Yearbook of the Shipbuilding Society. Volume 88, 1994, p. 363.
K. Jordan, KM Schmiechen: Propulsion tests with the SES CORSAIR and its model: scale effects in hovercraft. In: Yearbook of the Shipbuilding Society. Volume 90, 1996, p. 143.
J. Wessel: Review on German SES Developments and the Government funded R + D Program SUS C. In: Claus Kruppa (Hrsg.): Third International Conference on Fast Sea Transportation, Lubeck-Travemunde, Germany in September 25-27, 1995. STG, 1995 (639 pages)
