DocScience
Wishful builder
Registered: April 2010
Location: Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada
Posts: 44
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Gilbert Schmidt , docscience@hotmail.com
My invention consists of a dramatically more efficient arrangement of skirts that contain the air under a hovercraft. I have included both a rigid skirt and a flexible skirt at each end.
This is a simplified description of how the skirt system works.
I wrote it, hopefully clear enough so that people who are new to hovercraft, will get a basic understanding of how it works.
I have done extensive searching on the internet and in patent listings, and have not found anything similar to my design.
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First, I will describe the problem with the traditional style of rigid front and rigid rear skirts on a hovercraft.
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The typical rear skirt has the higher air pressure underneath the hovercraft, pushing up on that skirt, losing a lot of pressurized air out of the back end.
One system that was constructed at a large expense, had large springs to hold down the rear rigid skirt (to maintain the higher air pressure under the craft).
This rear assembly broke up, out in the open ocean, because of the pounding of the force of water on the skirt, as it passed over waves.
Flexible rear skirts do not fit as close to the water, and also lose a lot of air out of the back.
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What my system does, is remove all air pressure acting on the rigid rear skirt, by having the same air pressure on each side of the rigid rear skirt.
Airholes (not shown), on the top end of the rigid rear skirt, allow air to pass freely to each side of the rigid rear skirt.
This allows the rigid rear skirt to move freely up and down as it passes over the waves.
The air pressure is maintained by the rear flexible skirt, which is arranged so that it keeps just enough downward pressure on the rigid rear skirt, to keep it in contact with the water. In general, water does not touch the flexible rear skirt.
Any water getting above the rigid rear skirt, will have a simple draining system (not shown) to let it out.
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It is not readily obvious, but the normal rigid front skirt, with all of the air pressure on it, is pushed down into the water as the craft moves forward.
What this does, is to operate like a plow, plowing through the water, instead of riding over it.
Even flexible front skirts can have higher drag, when going through higher waves.
This creates a very high amount of water drag, reducing the efficiency of the craft.
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I adapted my rigid front skirt to operate on a principal something like the rear.
The front flexible skirt is attached just far enough up the front rigid skirt plate, so that the air pressure on the bottom section of the rigid front skirt will keep it in light contact with the water.
The air pressure on the flexible front skirt, will at times put a little pressure that will tend to lift the front rigid skirt, but this is balanced out by the air pressure on the bottom of the rigid front skirt.
An increased lenth of flexible front skirt, creating more curvature, will not tend to lift the rigid front skirt as much.
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The effects of my design, are to make the rigid skirt plates as free moving as possible, with very little air pressure loading on them. This will reduce stress and fatigue on the rigid skirts.
This will help them move easily up and down, as they ride over waves, and thereby reduce the amount of air loss from under the craft. This will also reduce the water drag, making it much more efficient.
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Gilbert Schmidt , docscience@hotmail.com
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Gilbert.
Current design effort, most recent version, (version #3), use this link below.
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boa...tml#post466171
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