self building

hi!!
Anyone of you have experience with self building projects?
Do you think that could be a theme for a thesis in naval architecture
or it is not so engineeristic?
Thanks

 

Navel architecture includes small boats. Only you would know the scope of your courses. The larger the vessel, the more engineering is required since smaller boats are not competing to carry cargo or to serve some purpose such as fishing or patrolling, etc..
That said, any building project no matter how small, can be highly engineered. Usually however, in smaller boats, engineering is rather basic and a good designer can "engineer" a boat by simple rules of thumb, past experience, and a good eye.
Everything depends on what you are going to school to learn and what's expected of you. If you are studying ship design, you should work on a thesis that reflects ship design, i suppose.

 

Backyard builder as a socio/economic subject can make some good paper.
The lies and truth of the backyard builder

 

heres one i built for myself, elm & oak on oak & elm with copper fastenings

 

All the time

 

The special challenges of home-building a small boat are quite different from the usual run of naval architecture topics, I would imagine. The effect on a design intended for such a builder is wide-ranging, impacting from available materials, methods and tools to limitations on skills, facilities and time.

Whether it would be acceptable to the committee or whatever that judges such things is another matter. There is already a very large body of knowledge as such designs have been produced for a century or more, so you may end up merely documenting what has already gone before rather than contributing something new.

If you tackle the assignment from the point of view of prodcuing yet another design, your effort will be judged against the designs of the thousands of experienced boat designers that have done their best for over a hundred years. That would require a great deal of confidence in your own abilites.

 

What does this mean? by self build are you referring to amateur or home built boats? or do you mean amateur design and build?

What is "engineeristic" mean?

I am a licensed engineer (PE) with 30 years experience in aerospace, automotive, consumer products, and the marine industry, I have never heard this term.

Do you mean that home builders build boats that do not require rigorous engineering analysis? This is not relevant.

sophisticated designs that took lots of engineering skill to analyze can be built by the home builder, particularly if the designer had the homebuilder in mind when it was designed. Many smaller catamarans and trimarans have been home built from professionally prepared plans.

Simple boats with light loads can be designed by copying the structural design similar successful boats. These kind of boats are both self designed and homebuilt. Larger boats with large loads are best left to the professional do design, or built from proven plans.

I would suspect you can have a good thesis topic for boats that the amateur homebuilder can build, but took professional designers to develop.

good luck.

 

Whoa, Petros, cut him some slack, he's not writing in his first language!

I noticed this is your first post ganz, so let me extend a hearty welcome to the forum!

 

I've had dreams about self building projects. You design them, put out all the materials, go to bed and in the morning...

SHAZAM! They're built, all on their own. It's really quite wonderful.

But to answer your question: No, this is the only experience I've had with them, fantasy.

-Tom

 

Ohhhhh, self built projects, sorry, my mistake.

Yes, I have some experience.

-Tom