[John O]

SWATH is Small Water Area Twin Hull. Not exactly a catamaran. More like a flat deck placed on two pylons resting on two submarine hulls.

IIRC the design ends up with very good seakeeping characteristics.

I doubt that it would work for something as large as a cvn however. But then again, I don't work in that area. I know when they first started looking at SWATHs (in the 80s) they did a study for CVN's but I don't know the results.

[Wombat101]

In that case, I can only envision a monstrosity where most of the gear and infrastructure required for both flight ops and to run the ship is located mostly above decks. God only knows what that does to stability and sea keeping, with that much weight topside (otherwise you no longer have a catamaran or Twin Hull or whatever you want to call it).

It would certainly not make for a very good aircraft carrier and would, in my opinion, negate the very reason you would want SWATH technology incorporated into the design in the first place. I'm not an engineer or ship designer, so I wouldn't know for certain.

[Robert A Cook PE]

SWATH is OK for smaller (frigate-sized) flat-topped hulls, like you pointed out. A small ship sees good advantages in stability, but at a higher cost to build, more water resistance (you need more fuel to go the same distance = more displacement = more weight = even more drag) and with a depth penalty: again, bearable if you have a small ship.

SWATH isn' effective for larger ships, mainly for the displacement answer I gave above, but also because the very large carrier sized ships don't get an advantage from SWATH in sea-keeping. Worse, they pay an extreme penalty in hull weight and complexity and expense of manufacturing and difficulty of construction for limited benefit.