ABSTRACT
ESPOMAR is a European Interreg Project (POCTEP 2014–2020) in which several universities, research groups and public organizations participate. The basic idea of ESPOMAR is to study the possibility of establishing a competitive regular maritime passenger line between Spain and Portugal in the Gulf of Cadiz. The project includes also the design of the ships optimized for each of the defined maritime lines. Having in mind that the new maritime transport system we pretend to stablish must compete with the existing land transport based on private car and public buses, several challenges arise in our ship design process that must be solved. In one hand, fast ships need to be used to compete with land transport time, but in the other, we need to assure that the ship are efficient and eco-friendly, using a sustainable propulsion systems and hydrodynamic optimized hulls. Likewise, we need also to deep analyze the ship dynamic behavior so that passengers feel as comfortable as they do in the land transport. State of art in ship dynamic damping systems should also be analyzed to define the best option for our ferries. A review of the methods and bibliographic available is made in this paper to find out the best option to meet the challenges of ESPOMAR project.
