Bow Shape

Discussion in 'Sailboats' started by SuperPiper, Aug 23, 2013.

  1. SuperPiper
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    SuperPiper Men With Little Boats . .

    I did a search of threads with keywords BOW SHAPE in the title. Zero matches. Has this not been discussed here?

    Here is the question. Are plumb bows faster, or are they just faster for a given LOA? If there is no rule constraints, are plumb bows faster than sloped bows? Cruise ships are built with sloped bows. There must be some advantage. If you were designing a boat from scratch and there were no limitations, would you design it with a vertical bow or a sloped bow?
     
  2. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    I would lean toward a reverse bow depending on the boat and the purpose of the boat because I like the looks. The A Class cats pioneered reverse bows/wave piercing bows way before anyone else. In that class they've been proven to work in combination with bow volume down low. There are several threads(boatdesign and multihulls) on bow shape.
    What shape bow do you like?
     
  3. SuperPiper
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    SuperPiper Men With Little Boats . .

    Not everybody thinks plumb or dreadnaught bows are in vogue.
     

    Attached Files:

  4. Leo Lazauskas
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    Leo Lazauskas Senior Member

    The idea of a ship designed with "no limitations" is too wide to be
    very useful.

    From a resistance minimisation point of view it might lead to weird
    knobbly shapes like Ward's Optimum Symmetric Ship (search for them on
    this site: there are some pictures in a few threads).
    Or you will get canoe-like bodies similar to long thin rowing shells.

    Or you will end up with strange multihulls or pressure distributions:
    "Diamond Tetrahull"
    http://www.cyberiad.net/waketet.htm

    Hovercraft
    Free-surface pressure distributions with minimum wave resistance
    E.O. Tuck and L. Lazauskas, ANZIAM Journal, Vol. 43, 2001.
    http://www.cyberiad.net/library/pdf/tl01.pdf

    Multihulls
    Optimum spacing of a family of multihulls
    E.O. Tuck and L. Lazauskas, Schiffstechnik, Vol. 45, No. 4, Oct 1998,
    pp. 180-195.

    Unconstrained ships of minimum total drag
    E.O Tuck and L. Lazauskas, Dept. Applied Mathematics Technical Report,
    The University of Adelaide, Dec. 1996.
    http://www.cyberiad.net/library/multihulls/multipep/multipep.htm
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2013
  5. michael pierzga
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    michael pierzga Senior Member

    If you need the longest waterline in relation to LOA, use a plumb bow, plumb stern.

    If you want a good boat you choose to shape the ends to perform a job......for instance provide bouyancy, knock down waves, increase foredeck area, handle ground tackle....

    The modern, style driven, trend of plumb bows creates a very unseamanlike boat
     
  6. SuperPiper
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    SuperPiper Men With Little Boats . .

    Leo, I quickly scanned through the technical references you provided and I didn't see any bow profiles.


    That is what i suspect too, Michael. For example, when J-Boats launched the J109, they had the freedom to select any bow shape but stuck with a near-vertical bow. They could have called the boat the J110 and given the bow a more sloped entry.

    Is vertical faster?
     
  7. michael pierzga
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    michael pierzga Senior Member

    Yes and no. When fully powered a Long water line will be the fastest. Fine entry forward will be the fastest.

    But in the end..what is fast ? And what do you want the boat to do.
     
  8. Ad Hoc
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    Ad Hoc Naval Architect

  9. Leo Lazauskas
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    Leo Lazauskas Senior Member

    You need to do a bit of digging yourself to get the shapes...

    You will need to find the photos of Ward's Optimum Symmetric Ships. The
    size and location of the bulbs and other "wobbles" depend on the deisgn
    Froude number. There are some Michlet input files that have the offsets for
    one of them.

    The offsets of the diamond tetrahulls are available as an example distributed
    with Michlet. Sideviews are a trapezoidal shape; sections are unusual
    SWATH-like shapes (actually they are special cases that include Cassini ovals).

    The hulls for "Unconstrained ships of minimum total drag " have parabolic
    waterplanes, semi-elliptical cross-sections, and parabolic sideviews
    (buttocks).
     
  10. SuperPiper
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    SuperPiper Men With Little Boats . .

    Hey Leo, you seem to have this stuff at your fingertips. Can you post a few images for me?

    Thanks.
     
  11. Leo Lazauskas
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    Leo Lazauskas Senior Member

  12. Mike Graham
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    Mike Graham Junior Member

    Unfortunately, hull design has a lot of local minima -- drastically different characteristics and optimum designs occur for different requirements. For a lot of low speed vessels, a sloped bow can make it easier to have more arrangeable space with a smaller waterplane area with no real drawback. A bulbous bow makes sense on a large displacement hull optimized for one speed but makes no sense for a small boat. A bluff bow may increase drag greatly for one hull but drastically improve performance for many styles of planing¹ hulls. A very fine bow might improve drag and seakeeping, but at the cost of increased scantling weight and greenwater problems. Inverted bows and really weird bow shapes have shown to outperform others in certain circumstances.

    So the answer is "It depends". There is no optimal hull design for a given length. Speed, purpose, weight impact, operational conditions, etc. all impact the actual hull design. What is optimal in one case isn't optimal in another to a frustrating degree.

    Plumb and inverted bows are certainly underutilized. Opposition when they are hydrodynamically and space optimal often involve concerns that are mostly aesthetic or unrelated to normal operation.

    ¹People here are fond of pointing out the word "planing" doesn't mean anything clear, but I'm not about to let a small thing like meaninglessness stop me. The same applies to my use of "displacement".
     
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  13. gonzo
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    gonzo Senior Member

    A plumb bow and stern is the best approach for a rowing shell that will operate in flat water only. A surf-boat requires flare and rake to make it over the waves and to keep from broaching and pitchpoling on the way back to shore. It really depends on the intended operation.
     
  14. SuperPiper
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    SuperPiper Men With Little Boats . .


    Good dialogue. It's starting to make sense now.
     

  15. michael pierzga
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    michael pierzga Senior Member

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