Chapter 5 Powering

5.1 Resistance and propulsion

Prior to the mid-nineteenth century comparatively little was known about the laws governing the resistance of ships and the power that was required to give a particular speed. Brown (1983) gives an account of the problems of that time and depicts the role of William Froude, who can be justly considered as the father of ship resistance studies.

5.1.1 Froude's analysis procedure

William Froude (1955) recognized that ship models of geometrically similar form would create similar wave systems, albeit at different speeds. Furthermore, he showed that the smaller models had to be nun at slower speeds than the larger models in order to obtain the same wave pattern. His work showed that for a similarity ...

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