[Master Sergeant]

Can Olympic swimming suit technology be adapted to be used on boat hull surfaces?

 

[bajadad]

Is your hull, hairy, pitted, full of poors.....

 

[[email protected]]

Can Olympic swimming suit technology be adapted to be used on boat hull surfaces?

Light Dimpling has already been proven, and I would expect some form is coming....

But not Dumpling.... Funny story, there was a Boat Mfg. in H/Beach who started out making a runabout Police and Fire Boat... It was a splash off 2 jet skis (which I later learned it was my nieces Jet ski's who rented them out to other Firemen & somehow he rents hers to splash)and a pod deck was added.... This Company had more money to burn then God.... A Buddy of mine owned the building they were in and had a Major Roll Bar Mfg. business next door.... So we went on a tour of the shop... As I am looking around I see a Fire Pump system we produced for one of our customers.... They are taking it apart to copy it.... Then the owner see's my friend and comes up to us... I am Introduced to him, and he tells me right off he has over 35 Patents Pending on designs... Asks me what I do so I tell him... He says he has a new boat line and I should send over 1 of my drives for him to test.... Yaaa. Maybe 2 years later I get a call from another friend who was building 12 cylinder small blocks out of billet back east, and something had happened to his company, so a friend had a sizable investment in this Boat Mfg. Co in H/Beach... He is sent out to straighten it out & tells me they have this Corvette Boat and its a Pig... It won't get out of the way of its self no matter what engine he puts in it... Can I please come over and help...

Well it was the same Company Al Hoebrick had taken me over to see several years prior.... Which I now also know a tool & die shop making him a complete 100% tooling copy motor of Yamahas 2 stroke. I told them they would never get there money from the guy because 2 strokes were dead in Ca. with the MTBE being dumped by 2 strokes...
I go there and everything seems top flight... 5 hulls being worked on, mold work going on all over the place, etc.

He then ask me to look at the boat... it had an Inmar B/B 510 or something engine a Dominator Pump and everything looked ok.... then I start to look under @ the bottom for set up... when the Owner with all the patents comes flying over... asking who I am and why am I here.... My friend tells him why I am here to help get the boat up & running....
When I look under the boat... I can't believe my eye's... Just as I start to laugh he come under with me to tell me this bottom is his Patent... and I was obligated to respect what I was seeing.... I am about to piss my pants now... This Ding Dong had put half Golf Balls in the Plug when he was making the mold to give it a dimple in the running surface... He had made more suction cups on the bottom of this boat then most lakes have in golf balls... So Lee tells me he is in deep trouble and needs to get this boat line up and running now.... I tell him I will call Tom Papp and get it lined up to fix the bottom for testing ASAP, but his boat molds were screwed... The Next Morning Tom calls and says POP what the [email protected] did you send me....
When I tell Tom he can't Photo or diagram anything on the bottom as it was patent pending we both started laughing so hard we had to hang up....

Tom fixed the boat and directed their people on how to fix the boat molds.... I never went back... However maybe 1 Year Later in the news paper I see that the plant manager ran over a sailboarder and killed him @ Corrillo Beach... The Company said it was a private teer who took out one of there Test Boats and that the President,V/Pres. Gen. Mgr. just happened to be in the area... The company is now gone! So don't Dumple! PS.. That tooling shop got stiffed also.

 

[Ken F]

There is an article on the internet somewhere that I read years ago about sharks skin. It is unbelievably slippery in the water yet feels like coarse sandpaper. The coefficient of friction is unbelievably low! The Navy had come up with a coating for Subs which cut fuel costs substantially and gained speed.

Ken

 

[SmokinLowriderSS]

There is an article on the internet somewhere that I read years ago about sharks skin. It is unbelievably slippery in the water yet feels like coarse sandpaper. The coefficient of friction is unbelievably low! The Navy had come up with a coating for Subs which cut fuel costs substantially and gained speed.

Ken

I believe the effect the shark gets is a thinning of the laminar flow boundary layer at the skin.

A solid object, passing through any fluid (or any fluid passing through a hollow solid object (such as a pipe) has friction where the solid surface meets the fluid.
This applies to gasses as well, since all gasses follow fluid-dynamics laws (they are simply very thin fluids).

This happens at any displacement hull, and on the bottom surface of a planing hull, and on the inside of an intake manifold, and inside a water pump.

Strangely, the boundary layer is actually THICKEST the smoother and more polished the solid material is.

A mirror-polished metal surface holds more fluid "stuck" to it than a machine-finished surface with a fine surface texture.

There is a point of diminshing returns when the coarseness of the surface becomes "thicker" than the boundary layer, and so becomes a partial "obstruction".

The slightly rougher surface "grabs" a thin layer, and sets up a "shear layer" which separates the drag-inducing boundary layer from the flow.

The polished surface does no such thing, so the effect of the stuck surface layer's sluggishness affects a thicker area of the fluid moving past, effectively creating a thicker dragging layer.

 

[chevy]

What you need is some of that stuff Chevy Chase sprayed on the bottom of his snow saucer in christmas vacation

 

[DEL51]

LV jetboy covered this in the old hotboat forums.

 

[Sleeper CP]

Can Olympic swimming suit technology be adapted to be used on boat hull surfaces?

Interesting you asked that question now that all of the sanding is done:

Well, it won't be that but it won't be glass smooth either: bulb

Sleeper CP