Vessels with suspension

Is anyone aware of any attempts at designing or building vessels with articulated suspension? I suppose that hydrofoils could be considered suspension of a sort, but I was thinking more along the lines of control arm/ spring/damper as commonly used in automotive applications. I would imagine such forms of suspension would have a much longer throw in order to accomodate waves and would therefore have to be very low-mass, light-weight devices. Clearly, there could be many forms of compressed-air motion damping. There could possibly be energy generated from articulated suspensions. I searched suspension on this forum but came up with nothing like a wave-motion suppressing suspension.

 

hi jon, you must have forgotten http://www.antrimdesign.com/powerboats/88.htm
there are some better pics somewhere on the forum showing the hinging hulls and propulsion

 

Jonathan,
Something like this? http://wam-v.com/
Gary

 

Yipster
LOL!!! Yes great minds do think alike. ;-)

 

Some good information posted in this foil thread:
Surface Piercing Foil Damping
http://boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=21853&highlight=foil

.......................................

Simple - the business end (page 86).
http://boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?p=187737#post187737

http://boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=11052&page=87

 

Sure, I remember the Proteus. I wonder why there is still no performance data. Also why a cat with 100 foot long hulls, 16 inch draught, (that can't plane, because the hulls flex, would require 2 - 355 MHP diesels? I also wonder why the cabin sits so high. Maybe the flexing of the suspension is extreme, or maybe they are planning for 15 foot seas.

 

Hscc

The USHIKIRO, built at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries yard at Shimonoseki was delivered in October 1987 to shipowners Higashi Chugoku Ryoju Kosan, a subsidiary of MHI itself. It is the first hi-stable cabin craft (HSCC) in which the cabin is connected to the main catamaran-type hull by a computer-controlled suspension system and shock absorbers, designed to absorb oscillatory wave motions and the impacts caused by high-speed motion over waves. Apart from its use in high-velocity craft, the builders envisage applications in passenger research vessels. Principal particulars are: length oa 12.7m; breadth, mld 5.4m; depth, mld 1.85m; gross tonnage 17t; deadweight 2.6t.

 

I cannot find any photos of it.

Is the spelling correct?

 

images

It was also a vessel named Voyager see:

http://translate.google.com/transla...raft&hl=en&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-13,GGLD:en&sa=X

 

Would you believe?? about 1945 I saw movies of a ply cabin boat experiment using large water skis attached to the hull.It went very well over wakes and against a head sea.I have never seen the likes again,except for a local ferry running on foils 1950`s.Which was never very successful.Damaged foils and many breakdowns.

 

On a much simpler scale, the 8.5 meter Pacific proa I designed and am busy building will have an "independently sprung" small hull (Ama). It will basically pivot from the centre on a nylon bearing and be "sprung" with strong bungee chord to both ends. I'm hoping this will eliminate twisting torque on the beams and allow the smaller hull to act independently from the main hull.

No idea how it will work in practice, but it's so cheap and simple I have nothing to lose basically.

 

http://www.ulstc.org/Herreshoff.html
have to re-read tho if there where any springs loaded in amaryllis

 

Air-ing out an idea

Here is the early demo HCSS, sort of self explanatory 2 pages. This is what the thread started out looking for I think, knew it was in old Jane's. I have been involved in the design of some very fast US Navy boats. One design has been serving as a special operations boat for about 15 years. As such the long term effects are beginning to take a toll on the operators. Compressed spines, bloody urine and a sort of "Punch Drunk" condition after harsh and fast sea transits, common in offshore racing but it is a serious disability for war fighting. So in an effort to offer solutions to this human factors issue I have resolved the following conclusions which I offer up for discussion.

1. Hydro/pneumatic articulated cabins by their nature introduce structural point loads and their associated structural weight penalty makes takes them out of contention for a fast boat.

2. Suspension seats only dampen vertical accelerations in a narrow sea state band.

3. This "human factors" limitation will forestall any performance improvements in manned fast boats until it is solved.

4. A tremendous amount of good development has been poured into SES ride control systems (RCS) and the results have been applied to Catamaran and Wave Piercer ride control systems. Without these ride control systems every existing multihull fast ferry since 1985 would NOT be able to ferry people.

5. That mature RCS technology could be tapped for very fast monohulls but only by some other means than the multihull solution of using a submerged, dynamically actuated foils due to the parasitic drag penalty.

6. A cabin supported primarily on an air cushion, within a conventional monohull, will spread its "suspension loads" across the generous amount of air cavity surfaces.

7. General position of the cabin in relation to a hammering 100 mph hull can be handled with cris-crossing alignment tethers.

This "cushion-isolated floating cabin" can then utilize the deep well of RCS control algorithms and adapt the same venting hardware!

Sounds to good to be true, what am I missing?

See attached conceptual schematic.

 

Try this one on for size!.. http://www.airboats.fi/

 

An interesting article on the rules about shock mitigation on high speed craft:
http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA446789&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

A couple of interesting presentations:
http://www.highspeedcraft.org/pdf/3Dobbins_Human_Factors_Issues.pdf
http://www.highspeedcraft.org/pdf/4Peterson_HSC_Biodynamics_Human_Performance.pdf

Cheers.