Environmental performance is becoming a defining factor in ship design, with emissions, fuel costs, noise, and other impacts placing growing pressure on operators to improve efficiency. While hull-form gains may be incremental, significant opportunities lie in optimising hull-propeller interactions and operational strategies, highlighting how smarter design and voyage management can deliver both economic and environmental benefits.

Future submarine design is increasingly shaped by sustainability and climate resilience. By embedding environmental considerations from concept through disposal, designers can reduce lifecycle impacts without compromising capability. The analysis highlights collaborative approaches spanning customers, shipyards, suppliers, and engineers, demonstrating how sustainable principles can enhance performance, flexibility, and long-term value today.

Delta-wing autonomous underwater gliders could extend reconnaissance endurance while improving underwater efficiency. Using CFD analysis across multiple NACA-based hull configurations, researchers evaluated lift, drag, and longitudinal stability characteristics. The work identifies promising low-power designs capable of covering greater distances, enhancing stealthy ocean-data collection and submarine support missions globally today ahead.

Understanding how people maintain balance at sea is proving more complex than traditional safety assumptions suggest. Controlled motion-platform testing reveals that stepping is a common and proactive response to vessel movement rather than a last resort, highlighting important implications for human-performance modelling, workplace safety, and the design of maritime operating environments.

As emissions regulations tighten and pressure grows to improve air quality from shipping, alternative approaches to engine emissions control are gaining attention. Advanced modelling of direct ammonia injection demonstrates significant potential for NOx reduction, highlighting both the promise and operational complexity of emerging in-cylinder emissions technologies for future marine propulsion systems.

Advances in battery technology are creating new opportunities for naval ships and submarines. Seeking higher energy density longer service life improved reliability and lower lifecycle costs designers are assessing proven maritime electrification solutions. The challenge lies in adopting these capabilities while maintaining rigorous safety assurance operational resilience and future readiness.

Finite-element simulations are improving understanding of submarine survivability during training-torpedo impacts. Validated against experimental data, the analysis assessed pressure-hull responses at different strike speeds and found only limited permanent deformation at higher velocities. The results suggest operational capability would remain unaffected, helping reduce risk and inform safer training practices today.

Structural efficiency remains a central challenge in marine engineering, where grillage systems must withstand complex combinations of bending and compression loads. A new analytical approach simplifies the prediction of structural behaviour and buckling response, achieving strong agreement with finite-element analysis while offering a practical framework for assessing strength, stability, and load transfer in reinforced structures.

As vessels operate closer to critical speed regimes, understanding wave generation becomes increasingly important for efficiency, performance, and environmental impact. Revisiting classic wave-pattern theory with modern numerical techniques provides fresh insight into how deep- and shallow-water wave fields evolve, revealing the distinctive behaviours that emerge near critical operating conditions and their influence on wake characteristics.

An all-electric submarine concept is challenging traditional underwater operations. Designed to recharge through offshore wind infrastructure and operate without conventional fuels, the Renewable concept explores long-endurance battery propulsion for regional missions. The study highlights innovative energy integration, operational feasibility, and emerging possibilities for lower-emission naval capabilities ahead in coming decades.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the frames of a steel ship were stood up on the keel like those of a wooden ship, and the plates attached later. Frames had to be shaped to match the curves of the hull design. Each one was heated in a forge and then hammered or jacked to match the shape of its template. In late 19th century, it was not easy fairing the hull. Flexible sticks, called battens, were used for fairing the lines, i.e. checking the

Human factors have long been recognised as a major contributor to maritime accidents, yet translating that understanding into ship design remains an ongoing challenge. Analysis of regulations, standards, and design guidance reveals widespread recognition of human-centred design principles, while highlighting gaps in consistency and enforcement that continue to limit their practical adoption across the industry.