Industrial Designer - Help with boat specifications!

I am designing a concept boat for my student portfolio. I want to create this boat using formulas to get all its hull specifications. I know that some of the CAD software around can calculate them, but I would like to learn the formulas to do them myself. Can somebody give me any references? Thanks.

 

search for book recommendations. There has been several good lists about what books to start with.
There are no magic formulas that will give you the answers you want. Most likely the best bet is to copy a closely matched boats general dimensions.

what kind of boat? size, use, speed etc.

 

Principle of Yacht Design by Larsson, Eliasson and Orych is a very good overview of the technical portions of boat design, and is intended as a guide for designing boats. While the focus is on sailboat design the recent 4th edition includes a chapter on higher speed powerboats and added powerboat relevant material in other chapters. Calculations are explained in detail (without using calculus) with examples of how to do each calculation.

 

Take existing boat, ant try to design Your version on its dimensions, architecture and layout. This way You will be creating s boat, not just an art object.

 

Thank you Kerosene and David for replying. I just downloaded some of the books you've mentioned. Hopefully I will get a better understanding soon. Thanks again.

 

Thanks for the suggestion Alik. Yes, the challenge and goal is for me to create a boat with innovative features and it being based of real specifications.

 

Jracev, how much do you know about boats?

 

Most of it is terminology I learned from my grandfather which used to build boats. I do not know how to determine the technical specifications of a hulls design. I was asking if there where any formulas that I could learn so it would help me calculate my designs loa, lwl, beam, draft, etc.

 

I was asking because of this part you said:

While there are times when starting from ignorance can lead to striking "out of the box" solutions, the majority of times it leads to non-practical, unusable or unfeasible products. The internet is full of beautiful 3-D models of "innovative" and captivating vessels with almost unbelievable technical flaws. And in fact, 95% of them (just to say a big number) remain just 3-D computer models.

The biggest danger there is to create a boat which is pleasing to the eye, but unseaworthy or plain dangerous in seaway, impractical for use by the crew and a nightmare for both construction and the maintenance. I have used the word "danger" because at the end such vessel can bring the designer or the manufacturer (or both) to the court, either because the owner is pissed off for having thrown away a huge amount of money for an unusable object, or because someone has been hurt or crippled by some badly thought (yet eye-pleasing) technical detail.

That's why some practical experience with the designed object is imo absolutely necessary, whether the object is a yacht or a corkscrew.

That said, regarding your question about the initial estimate of the LWL, beam etc. of the boat, the best thing to do is to gather as much info as you can about existing vessels of similar size and type, and create the regression curves for each parameter of interest. That process will give you a good estimate of what can be technically done (because it was already done by someone).
From there, you might start thinking about how to save a couple of tons of weight here or there, or how to introduce this or that technical innovation. But without pretending to make miracles, because you don't have a necessary experience for the evaluation of the results and possible negative side-effects of the proposed innovations. Small steps are best ones in this phase of your design career. The people who have created those yachts know their stuff too, so if they could have done similar miracles, they would.

My two cents worth.

Cheers and good luck.

 

How very well said, daiquiri !

 

The idea that a more or less whimsical notion put in to practice in the design of a boat would result in a hitherto undiscovered improvement, even a small incremental one, seems as unlikely as a random genetic mutation resulting in an organism with enhanced viability. In reality, such changes are rarely beneficial, and much more likely to be deadly. Evolution is not only a biological principle.

 

the challenge and goal is for me to create a boat with innovative features

Hell of a challenge since folks have been designing and operating boats for 6000 years or more.

Sort of like 'Create a new tool".

It would be easier to make a Porsche more efficient with a shotgun as it drives past.

 

Talking about Porsche's I see on the TV news that a new model was road-tested on a highway in Outback Australia (Northern Territory) on an open public road at 350 km/hr. I'm glad I wasn't riding my bicycle out there that day ! That is over 200 miles an hour, but perfectly legal on that speed unrestricted road. Madness. And that is not a divided highway !

 

Yes, what I meant with innovative features was more conceptual. As I said, this is just a project for my student portfolio. Most boats designed like you said remain concepts do to the fact that people do not consider a lot of things wich in reality will not work. Anyways, thanks for sharing.

 

Start with 10' dinghy. Try to make it nice. And build it Yourself.
This will give more credibility than any 'innovative' computer crap