We will learn about basic naval architecture and ship construction in this section. Planning is the first phase of any project and ship building is no exception to this rule. A naval architect is to a ship like an architect is to your home or office building. Both of them have the responsibility to ensure that proper plans are laid out before the actual construction begins; so that every factor is take care of.
Basic Naval Architecture Naval architecture does not only deal with making drawings of marine vessels (as shown in figure towards bottom of the page) but is also concerned with a variety of tasks right from the mental inception of the vessel to its construction, trial, operation and maintenance. A ship may be huge in size but as compared to the size of the oceans and the fury of nature during rough weather, even the largest of ships are just tiny specks floating at the mercy of the oceans literally speaking. Hence proper care has to be taken to ensure that a ship is safe and strong during any sort of extreme conditions it is expected to face during its entire lifespan. Even the certification of ship designs to the requisite standards is also a part and parcel of the naval architecture arena.
You will also notice that wherein naval architects are more involved in the actual design and construction of the ship, the marine engineers have the responsibility of keeping the ship running smoothly and carrying out all routine and minor maintenance jobs, except those which require a visit to the dry-dock. Since ship construction is a costly process involving significant amounts of time, money and manpower, it is not a practically feasible thing to actually made full size models for testing, hence a variety of techniques are used for testing models of ships and these include towing tank tests etc. which would be studied in detail. Some of the aspects we will be studying include structural analysis, static stability and computational fluid dynamics. I can assure you that though this specific page is aptly named basic naval architecture, you would get to see various advanced topics in course of time as well.
The image below shows the plans for a marine vessel and the different views from the perspective of a naval architect. I must also say at this point that such techniques are applied to big and small marine vessels but at the same time you can also carry out boat construction at least for small kinds of boats on a DIY basis. We will also take up this interesting topic during the course of our studies, so keep coming back for more info. Learn about the Yacht World.
