[HN Gopher] Naval Architecture
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       Naval Architecture
        
       Author : todsacerdoti
       Score  : 296 points
       Date   : 2021-07-27 15:03 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ciechanow.ski)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ciechanow.ski)
        
       | tfang17 wrote:
       | How many of us read this as Naval (Ravikant) Architecture?
        
       | dirtyid wrote:
       | Very intuitive. I wish there was a list of exemplar
       | visualizations for different subject matters. It's 2021, there's
       | still a lot of bad textbooks out there, emphasis on books.
        
         | garaetjjte wrote:
         | Maybe https://explorabl.es/?
        
       | uberdru wrote:
       | Reminds of something my father, a sailor in the British Merchant
       | Marine, told me. He was recounting a ridiculous North Sea gale,
       | basically hurricane force winds. The ship plunged into the trough
       | and then topped the waves, the screws coming well out of the
       | water every time. "It gave me a new respect for naval
       | architects", he said.
        
       | nwsm wrote:
       | This blog never ceases to amaze me.
        
       | mncharity wrote:
       | I'm reminded of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckaJs_u2U_A , an
       | aluminum foil boat floating on dense SF6 _gas_ , which I think
       | fun.
        
       | _Microft wrote:
       | _Some hull shapes are inherently unstable. The slightest
       | deviation from pristine vertical balance will make the ship flip.
       | However, even hull shapes that are initially stable at some angle
       | reach their limits. All of these examples assume the deck is
       | perfectly sealed and that water doesn't get into the hull._
       | 
       | Loosely related: here is a video of the German Maritime Search
       | and Rescue Service (DGzRS) trying to 'sink' one of their (then
       | new) smaller rescue lifeboats which has self-righting
       | capabilities:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz_N6MG5tt0
       | 
       | (Ofcourse it was a test if it does have these capabilities, not
       | an attempt at actually sinking it.)
        
         | dtgriscom wrote:
         | Interesting. The designers can probably analyze the rate at
         | which the boat righted to quantify its stability.
        
         | jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
         | Yeah, this is a fantastic blog post but is a little inaccurate
         | in some edge cases.
         | 
         | In solo around the world races like Vendee Globe, the boats are
         | required to be fully buoyant and self righting no matter how
         | they end up. The most common approach to achieving this is to
         | rig a canting keel with a device that when the boat capsizes,
         | lets the keel swing to one side, creating a weight imbalance
         | that rights the boat. They're quite serious about it too: you
         | don't get to race the boat unless you demonstrate it works that
         | way at the pier.
        
           | JshWright wrote:
           | It's not inaccurate though... The hull shape does reach a
           | point of instability, at which point the hull shape changes.
        
             | jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
             | There are hull forms (without the canting keels I
             | mentioned) that have positive righting moment through 180
             | degrees. Life rafts are universally designed this way. For
             | boats it's just not that necessary ultimately, as capsize
             | is pretty dang rare on keel boats as a baseline. Vendee
             | Globe et all are hardasses about it because they know if
             | the worst happens, there's no rescue possible on a short
             | timeline.
        
       | ljhsiung wrote:
       | Does anyone know how he creates these animations? I like the
       | representation and would like to create them as well.
        
         | jimhefferon wrote:
         | Expanding on that question, does anyone know of a place where
         | work like this gets discussed? I was unaware of his stuff,
         | which is indeed wonderful, and if there is a way to meet with
         | others who are interested in this kind of thing, and in doing
         | it for ourselves, I'd sure like to be there.
        
           | capableweb wrote:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com is pretty great for that
           | specific area :)
           | 
           | And:
           | 
           | https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Naval%20Architecture&type=stor.
           | ..
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=ciechanow.ski
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | mihaifm wrote:
         | Also interested. Looks like a lot of it is JS code written by
         | hand. This is certainly readable code:
         | https://ciechanow.ski/js/navarch.js
        
         | fuzzylightbulb wrote:
         | I had the same question. (Putting this here so that I can come
         | back later.)
        
       | andreofthecape wrote:
       | Very well done!
        
       | tobmlt wrote:
       | Nice visualizations! Next how about response amplitude operators
       | and statistical response in a random wavy sea? Spectra of Motion,
       | force, etc are really compact tools for design analysis. The
       | linear theory is quite beautiful in my opinion. Not Maxwell's
       | equations beautiful, but up there.
       | 
       | Speaking (indirectly) of the equations of motion, I didn't see
       | added-mass as I scanned through. Could be fun to talk about as
       | well as diffraction radiation.
       | 
       | Somehow the above are more fun sounding to me than Navier Stokes.
       | I dunno. My burnout shifts with time.
        
       | panic wrote:
       | The way the slider matches the position of the block as it floats
       | is very satisfying.
        
       | dtgriscom wrote:
       | My personal money-shot: "the center of buoyancy is just the
       | center of gravity of the displaced water." Very clear, very cool.
        
       | tastyfreeze wrote:
       | Fantastic material! Material like this blows the pants off of a
       | textbook and is an example of what educational material online
       | should be.
        
       | jonshariat wrote:
       | "It's worth stressing that in these static cases the pressure at
       | a given level depends purely on the height of the body of water."
       | 
       | How did I not know this? It's so counter intuitive that a thin
       | column of water can cause the same pressure as a wide one.
       | 
       | The video they link shows this in action:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJHrr21UvY8
       | 
       | One mind bending fact she shares in the video is that a thin
       | layer of water, touching the damn wall, is the same pressure as
       | an entire lake.
        
         | abraae wrote:
         | I'm building a system for measuring levels in water tanks using
         | submersible pressure sensors (triggered by living in a dry area
         | and being totally dependant on our tanks).
         | 
         | Quality sensors cost a lot - too much for domestic purposes.
         | Much cheaper ones can be bought from China, so I've been
         | looking for some way to test them, without actually altering
         | the level in a gigantic water tank.
         | 
         | It occurred to me I should be able to just use a thin vertical
         | pipe. But as you say, this seems counter intuitive, especially
         | if the pipe is barely wider than the sensor itself. Just
         | doesn't... Feel right.
        
           | lazide wrote:
           | It's called head - and it's a key calculation in if a dam is
           | worthwhile. The pipe feeding the turbine can be quite small
           | for a lot of power if the head is large.
           | 
           | You could also use a small pressure vessel/sealed tank, and
           | pump in water with a hand pump. You could simulate nearly any
           | sized tank that way too.
        
         | morpheos137 wrote:
         | why is it counter intuitive for you? It is not to me at all.
         | Gravity pulls down. There is essentially no lateral component
         | to gravity. Height is measured in the verticle dimension, the
         | same as gravity. Now imagine water column as a stack of
         | pennies. The more pennies are added to the stack the more
         | pressure is on the lower pennies. It does not matter how many
         | stacks are in front of or behind or to side of the stack you
         | are looking at.
        
           | jvanderbot wrote:
           | This is a great explanation, actually.
        
             | JKCalhoun wrote:
             | Hmmm ... reinforces my counter-intuition. The stack of
             | pennies might explain why the bottom of the jar would
             | explode, but not the sides, area not below the stack of
             | pennies.
             | 
             | My intuition (wrong here) is that the extra surface _not_
             | beneath the stack of pennies (your analogy) would in fact
             | _distribute_ the pressure and therefore represent a lower
             | PSI on all sides of the jar.
        
           | RealityVoid wrote:
           | Actually, yours is not such a great explanation, since a
           | stack of quarters would manifest greater pressure than a
           | stack of pennies. Whereas, a fluid column would manifest the
           | same pressure no matter the diameter.
        
             | Ma8ee wrote:
             | No, a stack of pennies would manifest a greater force, but
             | the pressure would be the same. Pressure is force per area,
             | which means that the increased weight from a wider column
             | is exactly cancelled by the increased area that the force
             | is distributed over.
        
               | Denvercoder9 wrote:
               | Technically a stack of quarters would exert a greater
               | pressure, but only because they're made of a denser
               | material than pennies.
        
               | RealityVoid wrote:
               | Ok, yes, this holds true if the support surface increases
               | the same. But the parallels still do not hold too well.
               | Imagine sort of a funnel holding water, no matter the
               | thickness of the base or top, the fluid pressure at the
               | base is the same. Whereas with coins it does not work the
               | same.
        
             | morpheos137 wrote:
             | penny is symbolic. diameter is irrelavent if scale is
             | undefined.
        
           | Nathanael_M wrote:
           | Super conter-intuitive for me as well. I appreciate your
           | explanation!
        
         | pkaye wrote:
         | Its basically the Bernoulli's equation. Its because pressure is
         | force over area and the mass of the body of water above it is
         | area times height time density so the area cancels out. You can
         | add velocity into the equation and its a conservation of energy
         | equation. Similarly there is a continuity equation which is a
         | conservation of mass. These two are the backbone of a beginning
         | fluid mechanics course in engineering.
        
           | jvanderbot wrote:
           | Intuition fails! Quick, point out the math! Your comment is
           | exactly what is derived / demonstrated in the article.
           | 
           | Parent was simply commenting how that math was not intuitive
           | (and so repeating that it was just math doesn't do much).
        
             | bopbeepboop wrote:
             | I think the point was intuition differs:
             | 
             | That the weight of a volume is linear in its footprint
             | seems obvious to me -- but other people will imagine the
             | situation differently, so they won't come to the same
             | opinion on what's "obvious".
        
         | tobmlt wrote:
         | Fluid has so much to bend the mind. Soliton waves, shocks,
         | expansions, critical transition phenomena (besides phase
         | transition) Look at froude number and planning hulls, the
         | purpose of chines, steps, etc. in a high speed hull to manage
         | skin friction vs wave drag. Wave Dispersion, wave
         | superposition, etc. the free surface itself means if you are
         | solving for flow, flow then determines the free surface which
         | then determines the flow.. add infinitum. It's nonlinear like a
         | baby general relativity in that way. The shallow water
         | equations are hyperbolic so you get shocks etc. deep water,
         | long wavelength waves act in linear fashion so you get
         | superposition effects. On and on. Fun times.
        
         | palijer wrote:
         | This is one of those physics phenomenon where I feel like they
         | are a software bug. Bell's Theorem and a lot of quantum
         | entanglement stuff is like that as well.
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/zcqZHYo7ONs
        
           | jschwartzi wrote:
           | It's actually quite intuitive, as the force is distributed
           | over a larger area. So although the pressure gradient isn't
           | affected by the discontinuity in the container size, if you
           | compare forces exerted by the pressure on a plate in either
           | section of the chamber you'll observe that the force on the
           | wider plate would be reduced to compensate for the increased
           | area in the presence of the same pressure.
        
             | garmaine wrote:
             | I'm not sure why you're being down-voted. If you double the
             | size of a water column, you of course double the total
             | weight pressing down. But you've also doubled the cross-
             | sectional area, so the weight-per-unit-area (pressure)
             | remains the same. This is pretty intuitive if you
             | understand what pressure is.
        
             | Ma8ee wrote:
             | The force would scale with the area, since pressure is
             | force per area. Not the other way around.
        
         | ummonk wrote:
         | That's interesting because it seems perfectly intuitive to me.
         | 
         | Both in terms of understanding the physics (weight of water
         | above the column divided by the area of that column, and then
         | any water around the column just has to have the same pressure
         | to contain that column) and just plain practical experience
         | from e.g. dipping underwater in the ocean and not getting
         | crushed like a bug.
        
         | marcosdumay wrote:
         | On those oddly shaped reservoirs, the walls compensate for the
         | lack of a water column above the places where it widens. The
         | actual force on the water is the same as would be in a
         | cylinder.
        
       | josh_today wrote:
       | Thought this was a new form of philosophy by @naval
        
       | jefurii wrote:
       | These are some very nice visualizations!
        
       | masswerk wrote:
       | I've always thought that metacentric height would make the
       | perfect try-at-home in your bath tube experiment against Flat
       | Earth. If the center of buoyancy and the center of gravity were
       | indeed the same, every ship would be rolling like a log and there
       | weren't any differences in types of ships and hull shapes at all.
       | 
       | However, I guess, those adhering to said fancy model must not be
       | bothered by such complexity of thought...
        
       | gk1 wrote:
       | Naval architecture is a fascinating and beautiful discipline.
       | This post does it justice.
       | 
       | It's too bad there aren't many naval architecture careers in the
       | US. We hardly design or build any ships here anymore. The one
       | exception is military ships. So if you have a naval architecture
       | degree your main employer options are a) government or b)
       | government contractor.
       | 
       | Source: Naval architecture degree.
        
         | ghoward wrote:
         | Hey, you might be able to answer this: if someone who wants to
         | learn naval architecture deeply (but not for a career), how
         | should they go about it?
         | 
         | I'd love to design ships as a career, but as you said, there
         | isn't much work, but why not learn for the sake of learning?
         | 
         | Also, aeronautical engineers, I'd love to learn that too. How
         | to go about it?
        
           | 5555624 wrote:
           | It depends on what you mean by "deeply" and how you wish to
           | go about it.
           | 
           | If you want to try and pick it up on your own, start with the
           | book "Introduction to Naval Architecture" by Thomas Gillmer
           | and Bruce Johnson, from the US Naval Institute. From there,
           | if you're still interested, probably "Applied Naval
           | Architecture" by Robert Zubaly or something from SNAME
           | (Society for Naval Architects and Marine Engineers).
           | 
           | If you want to go to school and you don't want to get a
           | degree in it, you can study something similar; but, related.
           | (I majored in Ocean Engineering, which included a number of
           | naval architecture courses.)
        
             | ghoward wrote:
             | Thank you. :) I am putting those books on my shopping list.
        
           | lazide wrote:
           | If you can afford it, go ahead! At least aeronautical
           | engineering is a solid (and not easy) full time degree
           | program. Embry-Riddle is one well known school, and they may
           | be doing online classes/have some coverage.
        
             | ghoward wrote:
             | Thank you. Online might be doable.
        
       | tofuahdude wrote:
       | I'm so traumatized by silicon valley that I immediately assumed
       | this was about Naval Ravikant. Sigh.
        
       | sandworm101 wrote:
       | >> It turns out it's a proper scientific discipline dedicated to
       | the engineering of ships.
       | 
       | No. It is about the engineering of all sorts of things. Ships are
       | a subset. I'd say that it covers all things that float, but that
       | wouldn't include docks, cranes and other things that integrate
       | with ships.
       | 
       | >>As containers are added the ship will sink a little and
       | increase its draft - the distance between the bottom of the hull
       | and the waterline.
       | 
       | This is the wikipedia answer. In the real world "draft" is the
       | lowest part of the ship, which might be something other than the
       | hull. Sailboats especially measure draft from the bottom of their
       | keel, a thing lower than the hull. The "hull" is the watertight
       | body and doesn't include things like keels and rudders which,
       | while uncommon on large vessels, normally extend well below the
       | hull's depth.
        
         | opium_tea wrote:
         | It's amazing what different people take from articles. That
         | someone would read through this page and instead of
         | appreciating the effort and craft their response would be an
         | absolute textbook example of tedious internet pedantry.
        
           | sandworm101 wrote:
           | Or someone who has to spend too much time around navy people
           | who obsess about these definitions, people for whom small
           | errors can lead to poorly loaded holds or vessels hitting
           | rocks because they didn't know their draft from their hull
           | depth.
        
             | NotEvil wrote:
             | But thise people won't come here to find answers to there
             | questions. Whould they? They will learn it in there
             | professional or academic life.
        
               | VLM wrote:
               | I live in a recreation state, and to provide some numbers
               | there are well over three times as many registered boats
               | in my home state than there are naval O-6 rank ship
               | captains. Just in one state.
               | 
               | Admittedly "beaching" a nuclear air craft carrier is more
               | important to the USA than a local bubba beaching his fish
               | trawler on a sandbar; but to bubba as an individual, its
               | more important not to beach his fishing boat as avoidance
               | of beaching his fishing boat is actionable for bubba,
               | whereas watching TV reports of a naval accident are not.
        
       | pomian wrote:
       | Bravo. As usual, Ciechanowski makes extremely easy to understand,
       | graphical expressions of complex ideas. Highly recommend this
       | site and his other topics.
        
       | content_sesh wrote:
       | Really nice explanations and visualizations. The discussion about
       | ship stability and the moment arm between center of gravity and
       | center of buoyancy gave me flashbacks of my undergrad aircraft
       | stability and control classes (where the moment arms between CG
       | and center of lift on the wings determines static stability).
       | 
       | The discussion about propeller design is also very similar to
       | aircraft as well - not just aircraft propellers but also
       | compressors in turbofan engines.
       | 
       | The fact that there's a ton of similarity between the disciplines
       | isn't too surprising, but the great visuals in this blog post
       | made that connection seem particularly satisfying.
        
       | djrogers wrote:
       | Wow - this is amazing work. Great explanations, wonderfully
       | useful animations, and plenty of detail to keep even the most
       | curious interested.
       | 
       | Well done!
        
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       (page generated 2021-07-27 23:00 UTC)