Thesis
DEVELOPMENT OF SMALL-SCALE BOATS WITH ADVANCED HYDRODYNAMIC CONFIGURATIONS AND INSTRUMENTATION FOR OPEN WATER TESTING
Washington State University
Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
01/2021
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000002390
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/120862
Abstract
The development of marine vessels with high performance or exotic hydrodynamic configurations requires extensive experimentation. Testing in instrumented indoor facilities is usually very costly, and the scope of experimental conditions is somewhat limited. This thesis reports on fabricating, instrumenting, and outdoor testing of several small-scale boats with advanced hydrodynamic and structural features, including hydrofoil craft, an air-cavity vessel, and a transformable multi-hull. Their hulls were made by laying up carbon-fiber and fiberglass cloth sheets on foam cores, thus creating rugged, lightweight platforms suitable for modifications and outdoor experimentation. The boats were equipped with propulsion and steering systems, communication and control modules, sensors, and data acquisition setups. The fast 0.6-m-long hydrofoil boats, including a monohull with tandem hydrofoils and a trimaran with a front foil, achieved speeds over 10 m/s while traveling 600-m distances in both remotely controlled and autonomous modes. Their thrust-speed curves were quantified using GPS data and a thrust-measuring load cell. The 1.5-m-long air-cavity boat was equipped with a video camera to capture the air cavity behavior on the hull bottom and onboard sensors to measure air supply, hull trim, speed, and thrust in open-water reservoirs. The performance of this boat was quantified in various loading and speed conditions, providing data useful for designing ships of this type and for validating computational fluid modeling tools. The third study focused on an adaptive vessel that can change its configuration between a monohull and a twin-hull with the help of the expanding mechanism that can move the demi-hulls in the lateral direction. As single- and twin-hulls have different hydrodynamic and operational characteristics, it can be beneficial to have a variable hull geometry for various missions. A 0.7-m-long transformable boat was constructed and instrumented. Its characteristics, including speed-power curves, circulation parameters, and motions in waves, were recorded for both monohull and catamaran states. The methods and results presented herein can assist engineers interested in developing advanced boats and testing their models in outdoor settings. In addition, this material is of value to the developers of unmanned surface vehicles that primarily use traditional hulls but can benefit from advanced hydrodynamic concepts.
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Details
- Title
- DEVELOPMENT OF SMALL-SCALE BOATS WITH ADVANCED HYDRODYNAMIC CONFIGURATIONS AND INSTRUMENTATION FOR OPEN WATER TESTING
- Creators
- PHILLIP Rance WHITWORTH
- Contributors
- Konstantin Matveev (Advisor)Arda Gozen (Committee Member)John Swensen (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 69
- Identifiers
- 99900606651701842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis