Everything Old is new again - Flettner Rotor Ship is launched

Discussion in 'Boat Design' started by rwatson, Sep 1, 2008.

  1. rwatson
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    rwatson Senior Member

    More historic amateur Flettner info

     
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  2. clmanges
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    clmanges Senior Member

    It just occurred to me that a smallish rotor could be human-powered. The drive needs to be reversible, but otherwise it could be built out of recycled bicycle parts.
     
  3. rwatson
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    rwatson Senior Member

    Yes. There is an example of t his in thus thread. Unfortunately the website is gone, but one illustration is preserved for posterity

    https://www.boatdesign.net/attachments/lasertest-jpg.93863/

    Everything Old is new again - Flettner Rotor Ship is launched https://www.boatdesign.net/threads/everything-old-is-new-again-flettner-rotor-ship-is-launched.24081/page-24#post-702119

    For anyone interested in the future, there have been some detailed calculations done on human powered Rotors. Joseph Norwood in his book "21st Century Multihulls" did quite a lot of calculation
     

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    Last edited: May 23, 2023
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  4. Clarkey
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    Clarkey Senior Member

    I pondered a pedal powered rotor a few years ago and agonised long and hard over reversible drives. Some time after that I got interested in retro-direct bikes and realised that pedalling backwards is really no big deal, making things potentially very simple indeed.
     
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  5. rwatson
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    rwatson Senior Member

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  6. Paul Scott
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    Paul Scott Senior Member

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  7. rwatson
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    rwatson Senior Member

    New Flettner application

    " Airbus maintains its own fleet of three chartered vessels, which ferry aircraft subassemblies across the Atlantic Ocean from Saint-Nazaire, France, to the company's single-aisle aircraft final assembly line in Mobile, Alabama. With A320 production expected to rise to 75 aircraft per month by 2026, that adds up to a hefty carbon footprint.

    To combat this, Airbus has commissioned shipowner Louis Dreyfus Armateurs to build three new low-emission roll-on/roll-off ships that Airbus will lease, but Louis Dreyfus Armateurs will own and operate."

    upload_2023-11-2_11-29-51.png
     
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  8. Pericles
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    Pericles Senior Member

  9. philSweet
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    philSweet Senior Member

    There are about 3.5 tons of emissions per ton of fuel, so 10,000 tones of fuel saved and about $6.7 million in fuel savings.
     
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  10. rwatson
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    rwatson Senior Member

    They came back with version 2, which looks like it works much better. The motor is much closer to the size I recently bought for my project of similar scale.

     
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