Solar Trimaran - any comments?

[JonathanCole]

http://www.gizmag.com/go/5630/

[duluthboats]

Hi Jonathan,

It certainly is cool looking. My first question is where is the water line in relation to those bridge decks?

Gary

[nero]

with the flight station so high up maybe you should add some winglets on the amas. This way you could controll or illiminate rolling.

What is the proposed length of this ... boat. smile

[kerosene]

how many watts per square meter can one get in direct sunlight with moder solar panels? - anybody?

quickly I got 200-300 watts / sq meter and current efficiency is around 15%

even with optimistic 25% efficiency one would get 50-70 watts per square meter. 10 sq meter ~ 1 hp. 100 sq m ~ 10hp, 1000 sq m ~ 100 hp

doesn't sound feasible at all. My numbers might be off - if anyone knows better , please share

[JonathanCole]

Originally Posted by kerosene

how many watts per square meter can one get in direct sunlight with moder solar panels? - anybody?

The best commercial 25 year warranty solar panels claim to get 15 watts per square foot. A square meter is about 10.75 square feet. That yields about 161 watts per sq. meter. 745 watts = 1 HP . So you need 4.63 square meters to yield a horsepower. However, the yield in thrust of an electric drive is 3 to four times that of a similarly rated internal combustion drive. Plus the slower you go the less power you need. And you would have batteries on board a solar boat, which means you can be filling up your batteries while at anchor until you are ready to go again.

The solar trimaran shown in this article has 180 square meters of panels. Which translates to 29 kilowatts or equivalent of 136 HP of internal combustion powered drive. More than enough to drive an efficient multihull at 8-15 knots.

[emrenergiz]

innovative..... all the concepts do not have to be effective or really useable, but they are ways to see a different perspective and open minds for true projects. rally good work , hot cuture, keep on...

[JonathanCole]

Originally Posted by duluthboats

Hi Jonathan,

It certainly is cool looking. My first question is where is the water line in relation to those bridge decks?

Gary

Hey Gary,
That was my first question, too. The article does not give the information. By proportion to the length and beam which are given, it appears that the wing deck is quite high. Being so high off the water it could handle large waves, but would it need flaps to keep her from going airborn in high winds? Combining an airfoil with a boat could have advantages as long as there are automatically operating control surfaces. The higher the hulls are lifted from the water, the less of the hull is in the water and the less viscous drag and energy required. It might make sense to have a hydrofoil off the center hull to act as a vertical brake to prevent vertical movements that are too sudden for the automatic airfoil to compensate for.

This is the ultimate wave piercer. The Amas could be longer, because you can reduce wavemaking even though you add drag. There would definitely be a sweet spot.

I like the open sided look which should also reduce windage.

[MikeJohns]

Looks like Art-design and stricly for sheltered water. Has the designer any ocean experience?

Presuming she floats just below the ama and main hull tops.

I get the immediate idea that the last place in the world I would want to be would be up on that 'Flight deck' in the ocean. She will have a very poor roll moment of inertia since the upperworks will have to be feather light.

What are the survival tactics for the 3 day black sky storm? What is the energy storage capacity?

I would worry about fatigue issues with that long slender bow, it will be carrying some big loads at sea. I gues it's there to stop her pitchpoling with the bridge deck so high. Lightweight multihulls are notorious for fatigue failure.

Be a bit like tying to live a third of the way up the mast of an open 60.

Also the amas look like they have way too little reserve bouyancy for the vessel to survive a beam sea.

In short if you lost control of this the sea will make mincemeat of it. I suspect it will make mincemeat of it anyway.

[Tad]

Very cool concept.

But realize it is just a concept. All it has to do right now is grab attention so the creators can get some funding to move forward into the zone of reality.

As Mike states above, we can shoot many holes in the undertaking, and that will have to be done if they ever move forward. But I applaud the act of sticking your neck out to get it chopped off.

Specifically they will have a very hard time building to a weight of 10 tons, perhaps that is the bare shell? The 6.5m height is probably unnecessary, every inch of that height will add weight, which will have to be hauled around the world.

Also I think the goal is insufficient, sailing multihulls are currently rounding the world in less than 51 days. These guys need to up the goal considerably.


Tad

[marshmat]

Cool, but I agree it's not ready for the sea yet.
As for solar. We usually figure on 1 kW per square metre as the power reaching your panels from the sun, if the panels are normal to the direction of the light. With a solar car, cells being 21-26% efficient, that works out to 210-260 watts per square metre that you can actually harness. (That's per square metre of cell, not panel! You have to take into account the gaps between cells too. Per square metre of panel, you might expect 170-210 watts on one of these.) Now for a boat you probably don't want A300s, Emcores, etc. at anywhere from $30 to $150 per encapsulated cell. You'll want cheaper cells, perhaps around 15% efficient. That would net you perhaps 120 watts per square metre of panel.