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Ten years after the 1st edition, it was time to update, extend and reorganize the material.
The book still gives an introduction to modern ship hydrodynamics, which is in my
opinion suitable for teaching at a senior undergraduate level or even at a postgraduate
level. It is thus also suitable for engineers working in industry. The book assumes that the
reader has a solid knowledge of general fluid dynamics. In teaching, general fluid
dynamics and specific ship hydrodynamics are often mixed but I believe that universities
should first teach a course in general fluid dynamics which should be mandatory to
most engineering students. There are many good textbooks on the market for this purpose.
Naval architects should then concentrate on the particular aspects of their field and cover
material more suited to their needs. This book is organized to support such a strategy in
teaching.
The first chapter covers basics of computational fluid dynamics and model tests, and Chapters 2
to 6 cover the four main areas of propeller flows, resistance and propulsion, ship seakeeping
including ship vibrations, and maneuvering. Chapter 5 was added to cover ship vibrations from
a hydrodynamic point, as a natural extension of rigid-body motions in waves in seakeeping. It
is recommended that this sequence be followed in teaching. The book tries to find a suitable
balance for practical engineers between facts and minimizing formula work. However, there
are still formulae. These are intended to help those tasked with computations or programming.
Readers with a practical interest may simply skip these passages. Readers with a more
theoretical interest will find additional background, e.g. derivations of formulae, on the
associated website.
The final two chapters of the 1st edition involved more extensive background on boundary
element methods. They were intended for graduate and postgraduate teaching. Research is
no longer active in these methods and more modern field methods are covered in standard
textbooks. The original two chapters on boundary element theory are now still available but
only as appendices to this book. |