Looking for pedagogical material for introduction course

Hello,
I'm an associate professor at univestity of Toulouse (France)
and I'm currently preparing an introduction course called
"mechanics of sailing". This is an optional "discovery" course
intented for 3rd year university studients who come from diverse
sections of the university, ranging from biology to sports,
and don't necessarily have a high level in mathematics and
mechanics.
I'm looking for basic exercises to Illustrate the couse, for example :
- Computation of centre of buoyancy and gravity, stability
characteristics, etc... for simplified geometries,
- Exercices on sail polars,
- Simple computations of force balances, velocity polars,
- etc ...
Maybe someone here has experience of a similar course and
already has pedagogical material of this kind ?


Thanks for help
David

 

These formulae may not be as simple to present as most hull forms comprise complex concave & convex forms - "count the squares" on equidistant stations to make cubes to get volume - messy in the detail....

I am not an Naval Architect or Naval Engineer, just a hobbyist & I use 3D cad packages such as "FREE!Ship", of "DelftShip" to get the elementary data from a drawn in design.

Maybe, some of the sail-boats/dingies or whatever you use in practical sessions would have such data available from the manufacturer. This could then be demonstrated physically (sometimes with amusement as the students capsize whilst trying to get in, or, during sailing?)...

 

Thanks for the suggestions.
This course is supposed to be essentially of academic
nature, so I look for simple geometries.
The "Optimist" is a good candidate on that aspect
and I'm trying to do something with it.
I'm also thinking about a simplified catamaran
(with two elliptic cylinders for example)

 

Without a reasonable grasp, of the concepts and principles on the different disciplines, regarding design elements in a sailing vessel (of any size), you will have a very difficult time conveying what these are to students.

Just describing the complex set of design decision compromises, necessary for a specific individual design, requires expert comprehension.

A "simple" design, such as the Optimist, isn't very simple, but the designer has very cleverly used his skills to create a craft with few parts and minimalist (seemly) nature. It's actually more difficult to design a vessel like this, than a more complex structure, such as a single focus 18' fin keeler (for example). It requires considerable design and engineering ability, to whittle down structural and conceptual elements into a simple homogenous whole.

 

Have a look at John Teale's 'How to design a boat' a lot of the material in this introductory book should be at the level you seek.

Cheers

 

When I was studying YMS at Southampton Institute, we had a well explained course "Yacht performance evaluaton" which was mathematically on low level but filled with excellent information. I think they still have Yacht Manufacturing and Surveying -course or similar. Could you contact there?