The idea that some how a university education disqualifies one from practical knowledge or design skill is something that is said a lot, but in my experience, I haven't seen it much. There is a tendency for highly qualified engineers to do a lot of analysis vs. design, but that is because they have the capability to do complicated analyses, and they can also do the designs if needed.
I have worked with a lot of highly qualified engineers, not only naval architects, but engineers in many other disciplines, and have generally found that they have as good practical knowledge as anyone else, often better because a deep understanding of the physics illuminates practical experience and allows extending it into innovative designs. Good fundamental understanding of the physics and math also allows using "analogies" from one area to be used in another.
One of my favorites here, though it was analysis rather than design, was a key part of a very complex design problem: It was necessary to determine the forces on an object emerging rapidly from a manuevering underwater object. A professor at UCB realized that the analogy between electrical potential and hydrodynamic potential allowed the complex geometry to be modeled by objects submerged in a weak electrolyte. Then by measuring the voltage potential between various points on the geometry, the potential flow coeffiecient could be determined and the forces calculated.
In a design case, we needed to develop a hydrofoil for an unusual application. Fortunately, we was aware of enough air foil theory to know that a "barn roof" lift distribution was what was needed to get past stall and avoid cavitation, so we selected a GAW-1 section, and the craft worked. In the same project, understanding the physics of manuevering allowed development of a pitch-stable configuration. None of this would have been possible without the theory and enough math to analyze it and build a computer model.
I have worked with a lot of highly qualified engineers, not only naval architects, but engineers in many other disciplines, and have generally found that they have as good practical knowledge as anyone else, often better because a deep understanding of the physics illuminates practical experience and allows extending it into innovative designs. Good fundamental understanding of the physics and math also allows using "analogies" from one area to be used in another.
One of my favorites here, though it was analysis rather than design, was a key part of a very complex design problem: It was necessary to determine the forces on an object emerging rapidly from a manuevering underwater object. A professor at UCB realized that the analogy between electrical potential and hydrodynamic potential allowed the complex geometry to be modeled by objects submerged in a weak electrolyte. Then by measuring the voltage potential between various points on the geometry, the potential flow coeffiecient could be determined and the forces calculated.
In a design case, we needed to develop a hydrofoil for an unusual application. Fortunately, we was aware of enough air foil theory to know that a "barn roof" lift distribution was what was needed to get past stall and avoid cavitation, so we selected a GAW-1 section, and the craft worked. In the same project, understanding the physics of manuevering allowed development of a pitch-stable configuration. None of this would have been possible without the theory and enough math to analyze it and build a computer model.
