Looking for online, accredited masters NA program

This is my first post, though I have been lurking for a while now. To cut to the chase, I am looking for recommendations for an accredited Naval Architecture / Marine Engineering masters degree program that I can do while keeping my day job. What is my day job? I am a mechanical engineer for a welded aluminum luxury-sport boat manufacturer in Oregon, and need a correspondence/online advanced degree since I am supporting my home-school wife and three kids for the foreseeable future. Who knows, I may even be able to get my current employer to offset some of my education costs. I already have my B.S. in Mech. Eng., and an accredited degree is necessary to me if I am going to go through the effort.

It is my opinion that it will be a boon to the company if I can learn the finer points of NA so that we can perform in-house hull simulations and advanced wake property simulations given our current product road map. Also, I think that there are many hull refinements we could make and take advantage of with more hydrodynamic knowledge than I currently have. The good news is that I know enough to know where many of my major knowledge gaps are.

Welcome to the Forum Mr McKay - excellent re you have finally signed up to post rather than just lurking!

I am guessing that you probably work with these folk (Google is amazing), but I am not expecting you to either confirm or deny this.
Alumaweld: Premium All-Welded Aluminum Fishing Boats for Sale. Find an Alumaweld Boat Dealer! https://www.alumaweldboats.com/
Your employers should be very pleased that you are taking this initiative, and I would hope that they will make a contribution to your tuition fees.

I am sure that @jehardiman or @DCockey might be able to make some suggestion re online Masters programmes for you.

You note that :

A McKay said:

It is my opinion that it will be a boon to the company if I can learn the finer points of NA so that we can perform in-house hull simulations and advanced wake property simulations given our current product road map. Also, I think that there are many hull refinements we could make and take advantage of with more hydrodynamic knowledge than I currently have.

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But I am wondering if you actually need to do a Masters degree in order to gain the knowledge to do the above tasks?
If your company is Alumaweld, their (extensive range of) hulls appear to be pretty well thought out and designed - I am wondering how much (if any) you can further improve them hydrodynamically in order to have a significant effect on performance and / or seakeeping?

Check 1. Lloyds' Maritime Academy and 2. Maritime Training Academy, they do have some online courses in marine science, including masters.

bajansailor said:

I am sure that @jehardiman or @DCockey might be able to make some suggestion re online Masters programmes for you.

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I know of no online NA&ME Masters program in the US, though MIT posts its undergrad and some graduate level NA&ME courses. Holding a Bachelors NA&ME degree I went and got a PE as that actually carries more business weight than a MS or PHD. SNAME has a online training course for the NCEES exam. You need to ask around your office to see who holds what certificates and who can sign for your experience.
Introduction to Naval Architecture (13.400) | Mechanical Engineering | MIT OpenCourseWare https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/97185/2-701-fall-2004/contents/index.htm?sequence=238&isAllowed=y#versions
Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering & Land Surveying : Licensing Process : Obtaining a License : State of Oregon https://www.oregon.gov/osbeels/obtaining/Pages/Licensing-Process-in-Oregon.aspx

Thank you guys for the quick feedback. To start, I will not confirm or deny the identity of my employer, just in case I unintentionally leak any product pipeline details, or any other details about the company they would like to not be public knowledge. As you all know, once it's online, it's there forever. What I can say is that I am the highest level engineer (combining education and industry experience) on our team, so there is nobody in the office that I can leverage for the PE, and I don't think the PE license would be of much value in our segment of the industry either. My primary reason for pursuing the MS, instead of just taking a few classes, is to open up future career options to go into higher education after my kids have flown the nest.

Regarding your mention of Alumaweld, there are a ton of welded aluminum boat manufacturers in a very small area around where Alumaweld is located. All of these are within a 10 minute drive of each other (with the exception of River Hawk which is a little farther down the road):

• Alumaweld: Premium All-Welded Aluminum Fishing Boats for Sale. Find an Alumaweld Boat Dealer! https://www.alumaweldboats.com/
• https://www.boultonpowerboats.com/
• Aluminum Jet Boats | Inboard & Outboard Jet Boats | Call Rogue Jet Boats https://roguejetboats.com/
• https://www.willieboats.com/boats/power-boats/predator/
• Pavati Wake Boarding Boats | Wake Surfing Boats https://pavati.com/
• Home - RH Aluminum Boats https://rhboats.com/

There has been a lot of cross-polination between these various manufacturers over the years as you could imagine, and the history of the individual companies and how they spawned and intermingled gets quite confusing. Listening to old-timer stories about how many of these hulls were originally developed, it sounds like a NA/ME may have been used on a consulting level when necessary, but internal engineering (and I differentiate an engineer from a designer) resources were much more limited than I would have thought before I came into this industry. Trial & error along with tribal knowledge sounds like it was the name of the game; and it has been very successful to date.

I would like to step up the game of my organization and reduce the cost that the trial & error process entails, since some future products being discussed may be a significant departure from where our experience lies. My biggest concerns are in the realm of hydrodynamics, dynamic balance, and CFD. I have had great success with CFD in previous industries, but it was all closed system, and I know how much getting initial assumptions wrong can screw up a simulation. Simulating a boat traveling through a body of water and predicting porpoising and wake behavior, or flow to a propeller to avoid cavitation, seem to be an order of magnitude more complex and why I seek advanced education.

A McKay said:

What I can say is that I am the highest level engineer (combining education and industry experience) on our team, so there is nobody in the office that I can leverage for the PE, and I don't think the PE license would be of much value in our segment of the industry either. My primary reason for pursuing the MS, instead of just taking a few classes, is to open up future career options to go into higher education after my kids have flown the nest.

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Unless you intend to quit your present position and enter the cut-throat, masturbatory, publish or die world of academia, getting a MS or PhD is not going to improve your lot. Really, the more you know, the more you know what you can't know; so it's all just experience, opinions, and belief anyway. And by reading technical papers you can leverage other peoples experience; but you're on your own for opinions and beliefs.

A McKay said:

I would like to step up the game of my organization and reduce the cost that the trial & error process entails, since some future products being discussed may be a significant departure from where our experience lies. My biggest concerns are in the realm of hydrodynamics, dynamic balance, and CFD. I have had great success with CFD in previous industries, but it was all closed system, and I know how much getting initial assumptions wrong can screw up a simulation. Simulating a boat traveling through a body of water and predicting porpoising and wake behavior, or flow to a propeller to avoid cavitation, seem to be an order of magnitude more complex and why I seek advanced education.

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Except for giving a ROM for resistance, CFD is not going to solve any of those issues; too much butterfly effect when working in the time domain with "random" seaways. Most of the "best practice" work was already done in the 1960's, and is documented in various technical publications. To push beyond the "safe" edge is fraught with risks, so always set up a crawl-walk-run development scheme, and plan to fail occasionally.
Perhaps Chris Barry, head of the SNAME Small Craft Committee will notice this thread and stick his oar in, but getting and reading the prolific output of the SC Committee would be an excellent place to start.
| SNAME https://www.sname.org/committee/8d94907d-d9ef-4592-a65e-d721e26a1e63

A McKay said:

.... I am looking for recommendations for an accredited Naval Architecture / Marine Engineering masters degree program that I can do while keeping my day job. ...

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Can't go wrong with Southampton University:

https://www.mastersportal.com/studi...d73-9cb2-46d8-a7e3-4da0e0489187.1651123073220

Bajansailor and myself are both alumni of this excellent uni.

A McKay said:

...My biggest concerns are in the realm of hydrodynamics, dynamic balance, and CFD. ...

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To echo JEH's comment.
This is about experience and experience in the very narrow field of your subject. This not something is generally taught beyond the basics of dynamics as noted in the excellent book 'Dynamics of Marine Vehicles".
To try and short cut this with CFD, is a slight fools errand. CFD is a programme and if the programme is not validated and well proven against known data to give consistent results, it is just a series of pretty pictures.
And if you're doing something "novel", how is the CFD valuated?... it isn't....so how do you know what you're getting is "real"....you don't.
There is no better tool than experience and trial and error testing when pushing the envelope or in areas not usually covered by Uni courses.
CFD will just give you lots of pretty pictures to use as marketing...

Same with FEA.
Garbage in garbage out, if you can't validate the results and/or know what the elements are doing and how they are used and how they can yield wildly erroneous and different results.

Start with the basics, walk before you want to run..

Thank you all for your help. For the time I will take your suggestions and look into the individual programs in more depth. From what I have seen of course lists so far, I fear that further education alone may be too broad for my immediate application. Also, digging around this site I found references to Daniel Savitsky (among others), along with attached PDFs (thank you very much), and I have been reading those through diligently and if I see reference to another work, I find that one too. So far what I have on hand is:

• Planing Craft (Savitsky 1985)
• Hydrodynamic Design of Planing Hulls (Savitsky 1964)
• Small-Craft Power Prediction (Blount & Fox 1976)
• Procedures for Hydrodynamic Evaluation of Planing Hulls in Smooth and Rough Water (Savitsky & Brown 1976)
• Resistance of Transom-Stern Craft in the Pre-planing Stage (Mercier 1973)
• Performance Prediction of Hulls with Transverse Steps (Svahn 2009)
• Hydrodynamics of High Speed Marine Vehicles (book, Faltinsen 2010)

Of most interest, in specific, is wake generation properties at Fn ~0.7 and conversely, hydrodynamics of hull steps at fully developed planing speeds. I'll direct my specific questions on those topics, among others, in their appropriate forums.

I'll upload copies of these PDFs later for future reference sake. Does this forum have a central repository for research papers that can be searched?

A McKay said:

Of most interest, in specific, is wake generation properties at Fn ~0.7 and conversely, hydrodynamics of hull steps at fully developed planing speeds. I'll direct my specific questions on those topics, among others, in their appropriate forums.

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Just remember that "normal" Froude numbers do not apply to planning bodies. You need to use a volumetric Froude number for those because you are always in a hump. To get your head around the problem I'd go straight to SNAME T&R Bulletin 1-23 and DTMB Series 62, 63, 64, and 67 released in the early 1960's. Attentionally a very good bibliography can be found here: Guide to power boat design. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0743966.pdf

Also see this thread Looking for suggested reading and info on high L/B powerboats https://www.boatdesign.net/threads/looking-for-suggested-reading-and-info-on-high-l-b-powerboats.66724/

While searching to make sure my links were still active, I came across this thesis by John Bate
Performance Analysis and Prediction of High Speed Planing Craft - CORE Reader https://core.ac.uk/reader/29817320
What's even more of interesting to you McKay, are the listed "related papers" at the end.
Design of high-speed planing hulls for the improvement of resistance and seakeeping performance - CORE https://core.ac.uk/display/82062382

Jehardiman,
That "Performance Analysis..." document is a book in itself at 272 pages. Impressive. I feel it is almost worth making a sticky thread with nothing but attached PDFs. I have a few months of reading to tackle now. Thanks for your help.

A McKay said:

Jehardiman,
That "Performance Analysis..." document is a book in itself at 272 pages. Impressive.

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That's what you are going to need to write if you want an advanced degree...hence why not many online Masters/PhDs.

I certainly hope you have joined SNAME.

Also, by the way there are some federal positions open with the Coast Guard in Baltimore, posted elsewhere (assuming you are a U.S. citizen). (And of course, with the Navy in the general area.) Not in Oregon, but as my wife said many years ago when I was at a NW boatyard and going through the 80 hours of work this week, but maybe out of business next week thing: "Look, here's a job with a firm that prints its own money."

The P.E. is a better next step than an MS, (see for example NVIC 10-92) and if you really want, there are ways to get a non-resident PhD through some very prestigious foreign universities - I don't know how that works though.