Journal of Fluid Mechanics

Table of Contents - 1972 - Volume 55, Issue03  


Theory of optimum shapes in free-surface flows. Part 1. Optimum profile of sprayless planing surface

T. Yao-Tsu  Wu a1 and Arthur K.  Whitney a1p1
a1 California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California

Article author query
wu ty   [Google Scholar] 
whitney ak   [Google Scholar] 
 

Abstract

This paper attempts to determine the optimum profile of a two-dimensional plate that produces the maximum hydrodynamic lift while planing on a water surface, under the condition of no spray formation and no gravitational effect, the latter assumption serving as a good approximation for operations at large Froude numbers. The lift of the sprayless planing surface is maximized under the isoperimetric constraints of fixed chord length and fixed wetted arc-length of the plate. Consideration of the extremization yields, as the Euler equation, a pair of coupled nonlinear singular integral equations of the Cauchy type. These equations are subsequently linearized to facilitate further analysis. The analytical solution of the linearized problem has a branch-type singularity, in both pressure and flow angle, at the two ends of plate. In a special limit, this singularity changes its type, emerging into a logarithmic one, which is the weakest type possible. Guided by this analytic solution of the linearized problem, approximate solutions have been calculated for the nonlinear problem using the Rayleigh-Ritz method and the numerical results compared with the linearized theory.

(Published Online March 29 2006)
(Received September 8 1971)
(Revised July 6 1972)


Correspondence:
p1 Present address: Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory, Lockheed Missiles and Space Co., Palo Alto, California.

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