Engineering360: "Lightweight Materials Launched for Shipbuilding"

The use of carbon fiber composites marks a corner stone of shipbuilding technology.. Although the U.S. Navy has been using composite materials lately, it hasn't been applied to ship hulls. This can be a real breakthrough for the navy. Since retiring, I have been out of the shipbuilding field for 20 years now and find it hard keeping up with new technologies.

I am Louis DiFrancesco

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I seek discussions with marine engineers and other design related professionals about the problems that are foreseen with my proposed Hydrofoil Sailing Ship as seen on YouTube Gale Wind Ship, inc Leaving Port.

Would you please contact me?

Applying lightweight (primarily organic) material to high performance monohull sailing hulls/decks has resulted in a proportional increase in beam. Fully loaded container ships have a very broad ''sail'' area, so some amount of broadening of hull beam may be expected. Less of a problem with tankers, but even with the widening of Panama Canal locks, the lightweight designs may push more vessel beams to beyond the Canal's capacity.

I am Louis DiFrancesco. I am from the areospace community, and I am attempting to suggest that materials/processes developed during the 1989 StarWars SuperComputer Project leading to the end of the Cold War might result in lighter over all hull densities using electroplated non-corrosive nickel in a "Bubble Wrap" air sack ship construction. The 330,000psi tensile strenght nickel sells for $3/pound or $4K/ton. So, $4M for material cost for a 1,000ton hull with a density of 10pounds/cuft that is 600ftx100ftx100ft barge configuration that goes 60+mph (52kph) could sell for $20M per hull that carries 10,000tons of cargo. This results in carrying 2 times more cargo by going 3 times faster than the current 5,000 ULCC foreign built ships that haul 60% or $78T/yr. This has created a National Security Priority by the Marine Administration to fund 87.5% LTV for shipyard improvements.

I seek contact with marine engineers/professionals to discuss problems/challenges to acceptance of this technology.

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