The Landing School Student Introduction / journal thread

Hello all,

It seems that many people have questions about various yacht design programs. I am currently a student at The Landing School, loving it so far.

I'll try to post some 'journal' type updates as the year progresses, but if people have specific questions they can post here or email me at samhalperin@att.net.

So my background is in computer graphics / photography / art. We'll officially be working with Rhino, Autocad and fastship after the break in December. I may get a jumpstart on this as the student pricing seems great, and the lab at the school is open late. For now its lots of math, and manual drafting.

We are being taught by two people, later a third. Steve who taught at University of Southhampton in England and run his own design practice for a long time. He'll put up a slide of a 65' sailing yacht, talk about it for a while, then humbly mention that it is one of his designs.

Steve said that Southampton has a BA in Naval Architecture / Yacht design that goes for 2 years. Of note is that the Landing School program, a 1 year program meets for 6 hours _more_ than the Southampton BA.

They say people around here renting houses ask for Landing students in the design program. Not because therer is any real problem with the students in the Systems or 1 of the 2 building classes, but simply because the design students are working so hard that they are never around. Hard to give homework in the building classes, EZ in the desing program.

So the second instructor's background is in mecanical / structural engineering. Jim is a veteran of the nuclear powerplant industry of all things. He is the man teaching us the math and structures stuff. Very, as he says 'linear' sense of humor, really knows his stuff, and personable / approachable.

The third instructor who I only met breifly will be teaching us cad / modelling. Also famous guest instructors.

Think I wrote enough, email me with questions. samhalperin@att.net

SamH

 

(Other TLS students monitoring this thread feel free to chime in here any time! )

Well, it is the end of week two of The Landing School design program.

In the first two weeks we have covered an immense amount of information.

Physics: First and Second Moments, Center of Gravity, Centroids, area of arbitrary shapes, volume and displacement calcucaltions.

Design: The disign spiral, sketching, lines plans, determining the shape of the center station, orthogonal drawing.

More than that we are all getting to know each other. The newness and novelty has worn off a bit, and at least I am starting to realise just how much work I have bitten off. Of course it's worth it and most of it is a lot of fun. Even the physics and math are doable, challenging enough to make the end result rewarding.

Current major project is to draw the grid and lines plans for the 26 foot sailboats that the TLS boatbuilding program built last year. We are doing this from the table of offsets, sort of the reverse, a good learning experience.

Sam

 

A note on social life: perhaps it's just me, but I found the Landing School very male. I wasn't used to that having been a humanities major in college. I thought someone ought to organize a big spaghetti social each fall with the college students in Biddeford, who are about 70% female.

What are you using for textbooks? To the extent we had any they were Skene's and Cy Hamlin's book, and the ABS rules. Larsson has been published since, and now that the second edition is out I would think it a natural, esp with Steve to help you with using metric units. ABS has since made it clear they want to get out of pleasure craft and all vessels under 24 meters Load Line Length (in most cases that would be 25 meters LOA). Study of the draft ISO guidelines is whats called for now. In addition to their scantling rules, their stability rules should be studied. They were outlined by Eliasson, Larsson's co-author, recently in Professional BoatBuilder.

If it were up to me I'd have each student purchase two small, unintimidating manuals related to stability. The first, from www.astm.org is "F1321-92: Standard Guide for Conducting a Stability Test (Lightweight Survey and Inclining Experiment) to Determine the Light Ship Displacement and Centers of Gravity of a Vessel". The second is the IMO Code on Intact Stability. Finally, I would urge students to also purchase the volume of 46CFR that covers intact stability.

Have Dick Akers (author of the stepped hull article in the current Professional BoatBuilder) or Don McPherson (HydroComp) ever given talks, or are they slated to? They could round out the powerboat side nicely. I was also impressed with the guy (from New Hampshire) who wrote about using load sensors on a prototype to inform structural calculations in Professional BoatBuilder a few issues back.

Best wishes for a great year!

Stephen Ditmore
class of '91

 

We have these 'show and tell' sessions every week, where the director of the school opens with, 'today is day N and we are N% through the year."

So, here is an update from N percent.

The general arrangement project for a Concordia 33 has been handed in. Most of us did ok, the standards here are high, as they should be I guess. It was a lot of fun working on those drawings, a break from the daily grind of "structures" homeworks (more or less structural mechanics, but for some reason they don't call it that.)

We begin working on our first big project, a complete design of a power cruiser. Moving on to the computer aided design which is a blessing for me as my sweaty palms and forarms and general lack of attention to drawing heigene have produced some pretty ugly hand drawings. Perhaps that was more than you needed to know.

Can't say much about Stephen's post. Yes, it is a male environment, and it is great to get out of here once in a while. This is not an argument against a more diverse environment, which is needed in every respect, but there is a certain element of interaction that is not missed when these sailor types find themselves around the ladies. Not a lot of showmanship or bragging or one=upsmanship, just a lot of interesting work.

That being said, tu-pal, the vulcan science officer on the star ship enterprise looks better and better each week.

Back to the drawing board.

 

Landing School Visits

Have there been very many perspective students for the design program come while you have been there to tour the school or has it been relatively low as far as perspective students for the design program you have seen?

 

About a dozen so far.

 

Landing School Visits

I thought there would have been more. What are the ages of most people in the design program and the ages of the perspective students from what you can tell?

 

I get the sense that a lot of people come to the landing school based on history, reputation..etc. I for one was not able to get here for a visit before enrolling.

Ages in design, average is about 25, max is 50 min is 19. 1 Female, 15 males. Students from south africa, uk, and all over the us.

 

Sorry its been so long since my last post.

Well, survived the cold spell that hit New England this past week. God bless North Face parkas and the wool hat my friend knitted me.

We are in the middle of modelling the hull form for the second quarter final project, a twin deisel 30 knot motor cruiser. They call 'fast ship(yacht)' the "video game." My background is in computer art, so I am having a great time.

On the structural engineering side we are studying buckling in colums of uniform materials. Thats the part of the course I sort of struggle with, though, it is also the least subjective, which I like.

People are beginning to think about "work week" in... april(?) where we will all go spend a week at a professional design office in order to get some first hand experience with the industry.

SamH

 

Eulers wall buckling theorem!
Came across it in regard to strain to failure ratios of graphite composites used in fly rods blanks scrim materials...comparing sglass to high modulous graphite to boron and to some of the new nano titanium/high mod graphite composite scrim blanks.
Probably very applicable technology to designing yacht masts I would think, although you don't tend to bend yacht masts as far as we expect fly rod blanks to keep doing...not only when casting but when landing fish as well..

Try to think of it as a yacht mast used alternatively as a gin pole to drag a whale aboard! ;o)

Have fun! ;o)

Cheers!

 

Local wall buckling should always be checked on sailing yacht masts. Incidentally, this is one of two reasons that steel masts aren't used on small craft. Thought steel is actually slightly more effective on a strict column buckling/weight basis for a stiffened mast than aluminum except that the thinner walled steel mast will tend to buckle or corrode (the other reason) more readily.

 

You should also look at the damage tolerance for buckling, BTW. How much of a dent will cause progressive failure?

 

three fourths

After a few weeks of very long days (and nights) the third quarter is finally finished here at the landing school. Spring is here and the weather is warmer, but when I left Maine on Friday it had been raining for a few days.

The 3rd quarter project was an aluminum sailboat 40' on the waterline. Offshore cruiser with various specifications, 2 people for 60 days, 4 people inshore for 3 days.. Designed to ABYC specifications.

We do an aluminum boat third quarter because it leads nicely into composites - we have to do all the plate and internals loading, but with a uniform material. Personally I loved this project even though I think the final result (one drawing attached to this email) is pretty rough.

I am currently doing my 'work week' internship at Viking Yachts in New Jersey, close to my parents house which is convenient. Been learning a lot here about 3d drafting in mechanical desktop (which we don't do at TLS) and about how a big operation works (Viking has 1300 employees.) Pretty impressive even if they do build stink pots. (Learned a new term for a sail boat from the powerboat designers here, 'blow boat.')

This final quarter the lectures drop of and we work intensively on the final project. Criteria are a monohull of 27-40' on the waterline. Must be ocean going. I am either going to do an open40, or something more personal as in my 'dream' boat. Attaching a rhino sketch of that second one as well.

I don't represent the landing school in any other capacity than as a student, and a pretty bottom of the barrel one at that. That being said, I am having a great time in this program and learning tons. Feel free to email me with questions about the school, for official answers you should find a contact on their website at: http://www.thelandingschool.org/

Sam

 

Dents in Aluminum Masts

I would like to know if anyone can give me guidance on the seriousness of a dent in an aluminum mast. The mast is on a 40' cruising boat. It is 52' in length, elliptical with a major axis of 9" and minor axis of 5.4" and a wall thickness of .20". There is a dent approximately .05" deep (1/4 the wall thickness) on the starboard side at exactly the height of the gooseneck.

How the dent got there is unknown. It may have been caused by a massive accidental jibe, or possibly by a handling accident in the mast yard.

Euler's formula for column buckling doesn't seem to provide much guidance, since it is for an undamaged column.

Also, what about attempting a repair? I was thinking of drilling a 1/4" hole and drawing a screw up from the inside and attaching it to a rod with a slide hammer to remove the dent, much as in auto panel repair. Is this advisable?

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Jim

 

My own personal feeling would be to replace the mast. Do you want to pay for a new sytick now, or wait for it to fail (usually catastrophic) and still have to replace it plus fix all the damage it causes when it comes down, plus new rigging (probably) plus the danger of it actually hitting a crew member (again, usually quite nasty) ?
The gooseneck area has the highest stressing on the stick, and any problem in this area is likely to lead to failure. Bending aluminum back into shape doesn't really help, as the material just gets weaker in that area.
Steve