Tanker proa

Discussion in 'Multihulls' started by Konstanty, Apr 18, 2016.

  1. PAR
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    PAR Yacht Designer/Builder

    Yeah, that's my thought too, given a tanker is 300,000 - 400,000 tons, the loading calculations on those arms has to be interesting to say the least and of course the obvious question as to why this arrangement might be necessary.
     
  2. upchurchmr
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    upchurchmr Senior Member

    I don't think you need the proa crossarm and hull.
    How much righting moment would you get with 1 degree of heel? Do we really think that tanker will not handle the force input from the "200 ft" mast/ sail?
    I doubt you will notice the heel angle.

    but I'm not willing even try a simplistic calculation.
     
  3. PAR
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    PAR Yacht Designer/Builder

    The initial stability of a tanker is very high, so the proa is just a convolution.
     
  4. Spiv
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    Spiv Ancient Mariner

    Par, you haven't read the web site description properly, nor my post.
    The speed of the test model is higher than the speed of the tanker model under its own power ie 4kn.
    The apparatus is independent of the tanker, if and when they develop it, it would be attached only outside of traffic areas and only used in tradewinds.

    My interest is only in the rig, ie the 4 furling sails on a contraption.
    My interest is only on the possible applications of that contraption on a cruising catamaran.

    Your interest is only in the glory of having a huge post counts mainly reached with short, uninteresting, sarcastic posts.
    You can tray and convince others that that's not the case, but I've got you sussed out!
     
  5. Westel
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    Westel Senior Member

    I agree, with 35 years expêrience in sailboat design,3 patents on advanced sailboat design,one funded through MIT Inovation Center, a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from NYCU and a Phd in nuclear engineering from MIT, this guy MUST be a ***** !! LOL !!

    I have no clue why he didn't thought of first appearing before the Grand Jury on this forum before he made a fool of himself with his TankerProa idea.......he could have saved himself a lot of wastefull tinkering and computer simulation/calculation, again what a ***** LOL


    You guys here rock !!!!!
     
  6. upchurchmr
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    upchurchmr Senior Member

    I was trying to find some history about 35 years of sailboat design? anybody found something?

    I did find another report of the MIT 10M training "tanker" vessel. The numbers seem to get a little different on the speed.

    Interesting that it is only proposed for the "empty" route back to be refilled.

    Relative to a boat that is intended to be driven by sails, the size of the rig looked really small on the test boat. That test boat was said to only do 3kts under power.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-ZaXosN9Ps
    While this is just a prototype, the sails/ rig in this test look poor to me.
    There was supposed to be another test in 2014.

    There was a reference to a patent granted in 1992 (if I remember right). What I saw did not have the illustrations to show how it worked.
     
  7. Spiv
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    Spiv Ancient Mariner

    As mentioned, I contacted the inventor asking him more details about his sail design and the possibility of adapting it to sailing catamarans.
    He did send me some documents showing his long quest to design some innovative sailing propulsion system that he calls Trydactyl.
    However, it appears to me to be too complicated and delicate to be used in the ocean.

    He also is too busy with family and further development of his idea to spend time towards a cruising cats design.
    Good luck to him, he needs it....
     

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  8. Stumble
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    Stumble Senior Member

    Apparently that thing works by harnessing the wind caused by all the laughter of people nearby. That must be the most convolutedly silly idea I have seen in a while.
     
  9. Jamie Kennedy
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    Jamie Kennedy Senior Member

    I think they should start with an Optimist Tanker.
    All the best Tanker sailors start out in Optimists.
     
  10. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    I don't know PAR but he's given a lot of people a lot of very good information with his posts here for many years. There doesn't seem to be the slightest evidence for your sneers and insults.

    If the designer of the TankerProa is such an expert in yacht design, then he must have demonstrated this by having successful craft on the water. Which ones are they? Searching the net for a design under his name doesn't show anything that has achieved objective success. Obviously he's a smart guy, but that doesn't always translate across fields. It's apparent that MIT lost out by funding his Trydactyl patent, so that's not really an objective success.

    By the way, if other people are wrong for criticising the TankerProa concept, why is it OK for you to criticise his rig design as being unworkable in the ocean?
     
  11. DGreenwood
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    DGreenwood Senior Member

    I'd say your people skills and your boating skills run about neck and neck. You've got Par sussed and you've got sensible boating concepts sussed.
    And yes that is sarcasm...I put it there to increase my post count. It doesn't really say anything about your input here.:rolleyes:
     
  12. upchurchmr
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    upchurchmr Senior Member

    Spiv,

    Instead of attacking the person why don't you be the "bigger" man and address the technical question?

    Do you think a tanker needs an outrigger to counter the sail force?

    I know you are more interested in the sails (which you dismiss with less discussion than we have had for the outrigger) but this is a total concept, isn't it?

    Show us how to conduct a civilized discussion.:rolleyes:
     
  13. PAR
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    PAR Yacht Designer/Builder

    No worries, he's figured me out and I'm awfully surprised, that I haven't been booted off this forum, because of my endless posting, continuous nitpicking, boring, unproductive and sarcastic participation on this board.

    Back to reality, no one with any reasonable hydrodynamic understanding can take the mentioned design seriously. If it had even just a few percentage improvement in fuel efficiency, it would have been adopted immediately, industry wide. It's an absurdity on the face of it and frankly, a lot of wasted modeling time. Clearly MIT isn't what it once was. I wonder why the U of Michigan didn't pick up this gem of an innovation? Maybe because they had the same impression the rest of us have (your exception noted) and typed a thought or two about it, once they stopped laughing enough to see their screen again. At least this was my reaction to this contrivance or ridiculousness and I'll bet I'm not the only one.

    If you're offended by the sarcasm, my apologies though honestly, you might consider the clergy as a career move, as my sarcasm wasn't particularly unjustifiable, nor particularly difficult to understand, given the subject matter of this thread.
     
  14. Konstanty
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    Konstanty Junior Member

    I'd seen the use of sails on merchant ships on the open oceans. Then you do not have to worry about beam, height or deep. Asia - Africa, etc.
     

  15. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    One thing that makes me wonder is whether a tanker would be built to take the point loading imposed on the hull by the outrigger. Why would a tanker be built to take such loads? How much is it going to cost to retrofit tankers to take such vast point loads, if that's even possible?

    It's also hard to see why the proa uses two cylindrical "hulls", since they are about the worst shape possible hydrodynamically.

    Finally, what about steering? I've just been reading naval architect DK Brown's book on the transition from sail to steam in the Royal Navy. The ironclads that carried steam and sail (in the days before steam engines were economical enough for ocean passages for warships) were notoriously unwieldy, because an unbalanced rudder could not be turned in the propwash when the engine was running, and a balanced rudder was not effective enough in the messed-up flow aft when the engine was not running. So how would the tankerproa steer, especially with the assymetric drag of the proa?
     
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