| What makes a great boat design? When you | | | | the water. And this problem actually became worse |
| consider all the truly great engineers, mathematicians, | | | | as bigger engines usually meant a bigger hull. By use |
| designers and scientists you'll soon realize that despite | | | | of a bit of free thinking, it was realized that by |
| their obvious differences, they never allowed | | | | placing a step in the under surface of the hull, a |
| themselves to become restricted by conventional | | | | low-pressure region of air bubbles could be created |
| thinking. Free thinking is what I call it and it typifies an | | | | beneath the boat, reducing hull friction enormously. |
| approach to a piece of work that I believe can only | | | | But this only happens at high speed, at low speed |
| be for the good. After all, it's how most advances in | | | | the boat behaves as a normal craft. |
| human thinking have taken place over the years. | | | | Free Thinking Boat Design |
| Stepped Hull | | | | So hull design in particular, can be transformed with a |
| And that's how the major advances in boat design | | | | bit of free thinking. Most of what I've described |
| took place too. Take the stepped hull design that we | | | | above took place through trial and error but |
| see in speedboats. Until the development of the | | | | fortunately for us, we now have special boat design |
| stepped hull, most boat designers, in the search for | | | | software that enables us to experiment with ideas |
| higher and higher speeds, resorted to putting in | | | | and to assess their impact on drag and draft with |
| bigger and bigger engines. Just as in car design, brute | | | | just the click of a mouse. More importantly, this type |
| force was thought to be the answer to everything. | | | | of hull design software is commercially available |
| That's why we saw those monstrous multi | | | | through the wonders of open-source programming. |
| aero-engined craft of the late nineteen twenties. | | | | It's a remarkable development in free thinking if ever |
| Low Pressure Region | | | | there was one, and for those of us with an interest |
| But the stepped hull changed all that. Although it was | | | | in boat design it means that we can at last set our |
| understood that hull skin drag was the greatest | | | | minds free and develop the boat designs that we've |
| impediment to higher speeds, no way had been | | | | been thinking about for years. |
| found to reduce the amount of hull in contact with | | | | |