Powerboat design book

Any recommendations for books for designing powerboat hulls?

thanks
Johny

 

Depends on what size and SOR.

For displacement vessels and general considerations try Principles of Yacht Design (one of the older editions, heard that the newer editions deleted some things) by Larsson & Eliasson.

For planing boats, start with Naval Architecture of Planing Hulls by Lindsay Lord and High-Speed Small Craft by Peter Du Cane.

 

Performance by Design by Donald L Blount has a lot of information and is the most comprehensive and current reference I knot of, though the organization and presentation could be better. The focus is on larger planing boats but the information is relevant for any size boat which planes, other than very high speed.

High Speed Small Craft by Peter Du Cane is dated though still relevant.

Naval Architecture of Planing Hulls by Lindsay Lord is probably the best known and one of the oldest books on planing hulls. The third edition was published in 1964. Lord is inevitably mentioned when sources of information about planing boat performance and design are listed. I have noticed that more recent researchers in the hydrodynamics of planing hulls rarely cite Lord as a reference.

 

Another vote for this …..

 

I believe that Lindsay Lord was sometimes discredited because of one of his suggestions. That was that a planing boat with warped plane will have "suction" on the bottom, progressively as the transom is approached. My memory sometimes fails me, so I may be wrong about this recollection. There is a bundle of good information in his book. It is a good place to start.

I have Lord's book in my library. I regard it as an aged treasure. copyright 1946 & 1954. I pulled the book off the shelf and opened it at random. It happened to open at the page that began chapter five. One of the profundities occur with the first sentence there.. " No design can be successful without prior analysis of the services which it must fulfill and the inherent qualities necessary to meet those requirements". We now rearrange those words of wisdom by using the term, SOR. Experienced forum members frequently relay that advice to newbies.

If the OP is ready for some heavy duty study, then have a go with Hydrodynamics of High-speed Marine Vehicles. Author: Odd Faltinsen. ISBN 0-521-84568-7

 

True, most modern texts start with Series 62 and Savitsky then follow up with work by DTMB and Delft. But without the work of Lord, there wouldn't have even been a start. It is just a good read for polyconic development, too many people today don't know how to do that. However the OP, Johny, still hasn't answered whether he wants a planing boat or displacement, large or small. Until that decided, it is hard to point him in the proper direction. Perhaps he should read this...

http://www.ghostshipmarine.com/navarch/Hull Design/Savitskyreport.pdf

 

Not so much “ suction “ just lower pressure towards the stern compared to the disruption zone , so the hull has a tendency to increase it AoA when planing .Unless you add stern lift , speed or achieve a better CoG / AoA / CoLift arrangement.Something like that ?

Dots pressure .50-50 density = equal if the boat wasn’t moving Fwds .


The age thing ? Darwin’s “Origin of species “ nailed it his subject which was evolution back in the day .Still a good read for biologists .Penny dropped when he was wondering why the beaks of finches are different on the Galápagos Islands .

 

^^ My use of the word, suction was ill advised. Progressively diminishing dynamic pressure might have been more nearly descriptive.

Easy enough to think of this bit of schoolyard physics as the incidence/refraction principal of angular impact behavior....or the way you aim your pool shot. Angle of incidence = angle of rebound. Does that apply to molecules of water in the same way? Perhaps we have to mix in the influence of viscosity? If we factor in viscosity then won't we need to factor in velocity?......... and so it goes......................

Fun to contemplate such stuff.............................But I digress. The OP asked for suggestions for power boat hulls. He did not say whether he was thinking planing or displacement types. In either case we have to push some water out of the way in order to make the boat go.

Dave Gerr's book; The Nature of Boats has some pretty good information as a beginning basis for design principals.

 

Not really that bad. As I have said before every NA needs to come to his own understanding of viscous flow and all that entails. Today we could speak of "thrust deduction" (t), i.e. the "loss of thrust" (i.e. the extra drag) that happens when the propeller accelerates the flow aft. Is the absolute pressure less than the nominal static pressure at that point...<shrug>.... I find that some "discussions" come down to conceptual differences rather than actual physical ones.

 

Lord was all there was 40 years ago, not sure there's anything relevant to modern design in it. Same with Du Cane. Bolger or Garden's design books give many examples of what works and what doesn't. Principals addresses some of the how but none of the why. Blount offers many guidelines and data. An extensive study of back issues of Professional Boatbuilder is probably the best source of up-to-date reference material.

 

As in Yacht Designs and Yacht Designs II by William Garden?

Professional BoatBuilder back issues older than two years can be viewed online for free at Professional BoatBuilder Back Issue Archive https://pbbackissues.advanced-pub.com/

 

Standout articles in Professional Boatbuilder include Mike Peters two pieces in #126 and #127 on high speed hull design, and Alan Gilbert's piece in #59 called Speed Prediction, which should have been called weight prediction. These are valuable reference works which should be closely studied by any one wishing to pursue the art of modern powerboat design.

 

Another "old" paper attached (in 4 pages) on small planing powerboat : "What about porpoising" by Jim Stolzt. Interesting including because he proposes an abaqus (Fig. 3) and/or a formula (Equation 3) for the LCG location which should avoid porpoising occurence.
Porpoising is a complex hydrodynamic phenomena, but a real threat for a new design : are there reliable (or consensus) rules of thumb about the LCG location (+ other design data ?) to avoid it ?
** some architects use the ratio LCG (from aft transom)/ L > 33% , L being the Lwl at rest but I find this data not very in connection with the real wetted surface in the planing mode.
** some others (inc. Jim Stolzt in this paper) use the ratio LCG / Bwl in planing mode (i.e. Bchine actually) , with recommendation LCG / Bchine ~ 1 to 1,25 , sounds more reliable ?