Warship design comp

Anyone who follows the aerospace section of ATS will recall the various little comps where members formulated and presented their design concepts for various types of aircraft. Well how about trying it for warships?

Here's one I conceptualised earlier:

That's a 1,800t light frigate (95m length, 14m beam) designed for "blue water" operations with a Chinese navy (PLAN) equipment slant. But to submit that would be cheating as I've already pretty much designed it.


So here's some basic spec outlines that we should all aim to keep within so that some sort of comparison between designs is relevant:

Mission type: Cruiser
Max length: 200m
Max displacement (weight): 12,000t
Limitations of technology: can employ cutting edge tech but nothing that wouldn't be implimentable within the next 5 years, so no WARP drives or anti-gravity. preferably use weaponary that is at least based on real systems.


So get designing! Guess deadline ought to be 14 days from now, after which a voting thread will be started.

why a cruiser? only one nation seriously uses them (ok so russia has a few tucked up in harbour). Surely something that would be applicable to more countries would be more practical, OPV, frigate or destroyer size maybe.

with a cruiser you have more space to work with which reduces the challenge of design. If it was a smaller boat it is harder to fit all the goodies in and so the trade-off's in the design are more important.

I would also suggest that most people on here would find it difficult to come up with realistic designs in a couple of weeks. How many people on here know how to estimate a displacement. Prehaps some links to a few naval architecture sites would be useful?

what software did you use?
and please say not 3dsmax

Paperplane_UK,
I chose a cruiser precisely because it's less challenging than a frigate. But if you are at the technical end of the forumite population here then there is still plenty of room to challenge yourself; if you want to explore the 'arsenal ship" and "power projection vessel" concepts the term "cruiser" becomes very woolly. At the end of he day participation and learning through discussing your own ideas is the name of the game. I'm no naval achitect, I can't tell you whether my above design would float, but I can play around with technology I see written about on the web and throw together my design ideas, and learn stuff in the process. For example I didn't know what an Azipod was until I started researching quiter ways to propell ships.

Anyway, the above design was came out of a thread here: www.sinodefenceforum.com...
One of the other ideas put forward in that thread as a replacement for the Type-053 Frigate: www.sinodefenceforum.com...

Originally posted by bodrul
what software did you use?
and please say not 3dsmax

Better still; I use MS Paint. Then I render it in Photostudio 5 which is something I got free with some scanner a few years back.

hey great thread , a neat idea

i am unsure if i have time to unlease my own delusions of naval archetecture on the world right now

but your single vectored thruster is a fooking huge no no on a warship

they are uber cool on tugs and oceanographic reserch vessels

but they do not worry too much about damage control and survivability

you got to have twin shafts ,

a failure of just one gear or bearing in your thruster will leave the vessel either totally motionless or with the thruster jammed at one angle

before you say " mount threee or four thrusters " - the survuvivability / complexity of the entire concept is IMHO flawed - as i said failure of just one component

or battle damage can leave your "turret " jammed

just my 00.02 groats YMMV

Planeman, what propulsion is that on the end? Normal screw or ASIPOD?
If its ASIPOD I wonder how quiet that would be...

I have to agree with him about the pod, not the best choice for a large warship. The RN has trialed them on their hydrographic survey vessels (HMS Echo and HMS Enterprise) with no end of problems.

For design software i would suggest freeship or if you can get it maxsurf (they do a limeted free version for registed students)

www.freeship.org...

www.formsys.com...


And yes i am at the technical end of the forum being a professional naval architect (those that know me on here, will have realsised i am normally found in the naval type discussions).

I am not sure how complete these are but a useful site for basic naval architecture is:

web.nps.navy.mil...

Edit:
Asipods can be made as quiet as any other propeller, what they do give is slow speed manouverability (people have tried turning them through large angles at high speed and have generally ripped them right off the hull)

[edit on 14-12-2006 by paperplane_uk]

Interesting, a friend of mine once served on a PO cruise ship with several of them instead of main engines, he said nothing but praises about them.
Paperplane, wouldnt they be quieter since they are just electric motors instead of screws connected to a main engine, I mean if they where hooked up with large batteries wouldnt that make them quieter?

Are these warships limited to sea-worthy classes, or can some of us conjure up some of our more creative sides and draw up space-worthy warships?

Because let me tell you, me loves space warships.

Shattered OUT...

Originally posted by devilwasp
Interesting, a friend of mine once served on a PO cruise ship with several of them instead of main engines, he said nothing but praises about them.
Paperplane, wouldnt they be quieter since they are just electric motors instead of screws connected to a main engine, I mean if they where hooked up with large batteries wouldnt that make them quieter?

I guess your mate isnt on one of the cruise ships who have had major problems with their pods and who's companies are in the process of suing Rolls Royce and Alstrom over the costs of replcing their pods.

The noise from the shafting is a small percentage of the total noise from the propulsion system. Most still comes from the actual propeller which wont change all that much. Where noise reduction can be made is in placement of the main engines (mostly marine gas turbines for cruise ships and warships). With no need for direct shafting the engines can be placed anywhere on the ship, giveing the designers more flexability. On a cruise ship this means they are placed away from passenger cabins, on a warship they could be placed above the waterline for reduced noise transfer and ease of maintainance. In fact the new UK carriers the gas turbines are placed about deck level under each of the control towers for precicely this reason.

May I ask which program u have used for the design?

There have been a number of Cruise ships in this yard(Newport News Shipbuilding) for quick repairs to their Aziopods. This seems to be a wonderful system offering great flexability when it is working..but there seems to be long term problems keeping them operating.
THese have been such quick jobs to get these ships out again that they have drafted men from other projects to help with the turn around and get these boats back out to sea. This type of ship repair is quick moneys for this yard so they pull people from where they can get them to get the jobs completed and moneys flowing.

There was a cruise ship some years ago ..a newly built one which caught fire out at sea in a paint storage locker aft. She was brought here for repairs and back out to sea. As I recall it was a cruise ship of the Carnival Lines.

Thanks,
Orangetom

I see lots of debate about azipods, but no home-grown ATS cruiser designs. Am I going blind???!!!????

A taste of things to come....

Originally posted by planeman
I see lots of debate about azipods, but no home-grown ATS cruiser designs. Am I going blind???!!!????

Well planeman , its no use having a 20 billion pound battleship if it cant move is there?

Give people a chance to put something together.

Planeman, on the first design in the above thread, i was just wondering why you decided on such a steep sheer profile at the front of your vessel?

Ps. It should be noted that Azipod is a trade name for the azimuth thrusters marketed by ABB and not the name of that type of propulsion system (it is a bit like calling a vacuum cleaner a hoover or a dyson).

Rolls Royce get very upset when people refer to their azimuth thrusters as azipods!!!

Originally posted by paperplane_uk
Planeman, on the first design in the above thread, i was just wondering why you decided on such a steep sheer profile at the front of your vessel?

I won't answer that until you chuck some concepts of your own into the ring

My current line of thought:

Originally posted by ShatteredSkies
Are these warships limited to sea-worthy classes, or can some of us conjure up some of our more creative sides and draw up space-worthy warships?

Because let me tell you, me loves space warships.

Shattered OUT...

Well planeman did rule out the option of using warp drives et all; so I guess no futuristic ships, but maybe you can build something space faring but more to the 'near future' theme..

Or maybe there should be a another thread for that!

i hope this thread is still ALIVE...
there hopefully be some interesting concepts