Modern paddlewheels

A search on Google images.. Water Turbines ..bring up some interesting turbine designs which absorbe power from water.Reverse application can apply.

 

Belt drive testet anually in Minnesota

Great page Yipster!

We have people in the norther states that test the "belt-drive" concept every winter:

"If this thing runs so gosh darn good on snow it out to run real good on water!" "You bet Ya and pass the beer!"

Well, almost. And then they get nominated for the Darwin award or make some DNR fatality list.

 

Efficiency of a rotating hull

A paddle wheel is basically a reaction drive that creates thrust by pushing against the water. But the thrust vector is not unidirectional. The wheel lifts some of the water and pushes some within the fluid body in a plume which has complex currents and eddies. A wheel which also serves as flotation is interesting because it is a thruster and hull at the same time. An interesting question is: since the flotation wheel turns, is this effectively greater wetted surface resistance (wetted surface x time) or because the wheel is turning in its own lubricant, is such a hull (not the thruster since it has slippage) in fact much more efficient?

Also interesting might be a rotating hull that goes axially fore and aft with an archimedes screw blade wrapping the rotating hull. Might be better than a pontoon boat.

 

The wheel lifts some of the water and pushes some within the fluid body in a plume which has complex currents and eddies.

There are articulated paddels that mostly just push , and do very little lifting.

FAST FRED

 

found an old article of those northern states activity's in an old boating magazine, see specs below. they race snowmobiles against waterbikes and guess who wins? running hard enough into the water with a snowmobile and see where it sunk is how it started but hitting the water with 35 mph they beat the waterbike competition hands down

 

Thanks yipster.Still waiting.waiting.waiting activemag.co.uk..won`t let me in.
If you runn a paddle the oposite way everyone else does,you can make it work like a water jet.Discharge the mass into the atmosphere.

 

SamSam mentions that a granted patent may not actually work,and often the Patent Attorney may not even understand the subjet and the applicant does not know the difference between his model and others.But patents still get granted.Water propulsion is a good area for this to happen.

 

Tom, the article i mentioned was i reply to your text about variable drive height and not about paddle wheels.
go to page 4 at http://www.activemag.co.uk/BookReader/getBook.asp?Path=wop/2005/03/24 and read about mercruiser's ITS option on the new bravo XR
you need flash for this site.

 

Here it is. We don't need no steenking interest. It's 2 cut and pastes from a different forum and another patent. C+P 1...

Date Posted: Sat Jun 7 11:40:41 2003
Message:
I have a bunch of Sternwheelers and Small Boat Journals from the late 70's on and I know that somewhere in there someone wrote a letter describing their sternwheel paddle arrangement which had the paddles pivoted on the ends,on the centerline of the paddle.They pivoted freely with no connections to each other and had a light angle iron on one side that by its weight kept the paddles roughly vertical while in the air,I believe to have some uniformity on the paddle's positions as they entered the water.Upon entering the water the pressure of the water on both sides of the pivot points took over making the paddles pivot and remain mostly vertical thru the power stroke.They claimed something like a 30 or 50% improvement over fixed paddles.Yikes

C+P 2....

Reply Posted by: Sam
Date Posted: Thu Aug 19 13:54:50 2004
Message:
I finally found the source of my earlier reply about buckets.It seems similar but different from what I posted so who knows,maybe I imagined the first one.This is from an ASA Newsletter,June 1993, Vol.1,No.2 "The Paddle Wheel Re-Invented The following is an excerpt from a letter received from Donald S. Seiford; .....I set about to design out the drawbacks listed above.First,using the laws of physics,I designed a paddle that would remain vertical at all times.The paddle has an equal area above and below a horizontal axis.The paddle is hollow so the top half can be filled with a light bouyant material and the bottom half can be filled with a heavy material.When the paddles are out of the water,the weight will keep them vertical.The paddles will enter the water with little resistance and start to rotate until they are submerged. Once they are submerged,the bouyancy on the top half and the weight on the bottom half takes over and the paddle will remain verticle through its thrust cycle.The paddle will again start to rotate as it leaves the water and will go back to verticle when out of the water. Based on tank tests,this new design is 50% more effecient than the standard paddle wheel,which is more effecient than a propeller up to 1000hp,which means that the same thrust requires 50% less hp or 1/2 the fuel consumption. Anyone desiring more information should contact: DS Industrial & Marine Co. Inc. 5685 Annette Ave. E Inver Grove Heights,MN 55077 "
I still think I saw the first description somewhere else.This description says its the bouyant and weighted material that keep the paddle verticle during the thrust cycle,but I think it would be equal pressure on both halves that would do it.


Here's the patent, dated 1897. Sort of trumps the guy above. Since when do the "laws of physics" mean "claiming someone elses ideas as mine" ? Sam (BTW, are the thumbnails able to be enlarged and read by other people or is that only an option for the poster of the thumbnails?)

 

If you would like to see how the professional paddlewheelers with the correct power to weight ratios and propulsion control systems operate visit..www.robert-harrington.com/grebetimelaps or search Google Images..mating dance grebe.

 

Yeah..that's the ticket. Duct tape about ten thousand to the hull and get out the whip.

 

May be it would be better if the paddlewheel was run in reverse like this,instead of those flighty ducks.

 

Laminar flow

Laminar flow is an interesting phenomenon that relates to objects moving through fluids (liquid or gas). It seems that very close to the surface of the object there are effective layers of fluid that have "stickiness" to the object. This means that if the object suddenly changes direction, the fluid layers are momentarily ripped away from the objects surface, but quickly reestablish themselves.

This happens when the wind blowing across the land encounters a hill. The air mass flows up the hill with laminar flow and reaching the peak the layers are pulled away from the surface leaving a low pressure (suction) pocket in the lee of the hill, until with sufficient distance the moving layers drop back down and reestablish the laminar flow. Same sort of thing happens when a boat moves through water. It establishes laminar flow which is layers of water flowing against the surface of the hull in close proximity.

Nicola Tesla invented a turbine that used no blades or paddles or vanes of any type. It used only laminar flow and is reported to be very efficient, scalable and cheap to build because it is made from flat plates that rotate on a shaft, using only laminar flow to accelerate the working fluid. This might work well for boat propulsion, being somewhat between the paddlewheel concept and the rotating hull.
See:http:// www.frank.germano.com/teslaturbine.htm

 

Thanks for comments and interesting info.Have been involved with many types of machines that move all types of materials liquid and solids and always find the subject very interesting.Moving particles by sonic induction is probably little known or practiced, perhaps on a limited scale but certainly is interesting too.However crude devices must be made before more advanced models can prove their worth.

 

guest
on my last visit to Echuca on the Murray river Australia I saw sever recently built paddlers. nothing special but they looked and sever were designed as 'houseboats"