I considered a number of themes for the Marine Design column, and when I started writing about them, for some reason my mind went ‘beams are cheap’. I have a vague recollection of noticing this early in my career when some design luminary was discussing ship designs, but I don’t remember who it was.
I always think about that when I first put a design on paper in pencil, when I make my first rough sketches. This is a very powerful truism and over the years I have seen it applied to great effect many times.
The quirk of this truism is that it may never become clear to young naval architects until someone mentions it. Yes, beams are cheap!
Even if problems are discovered after the ship is built, sponsons are often the only cost-effective fix, not exactly clean, but very cheap compared to all alternatives .
Since the discovery that “beams are cheap” I have come across other truisms, mostly detailed truisms. For example, cold-formed wood can always produce more efficient structures than standard fiberglass. Or the engine he burns ½ lb of fuel per horsepower per hour.
Few design truisms can be applied in a more general way.
I will describe two of them. The first is relatively famous, but generally not considered a design truism. It is a Rumsfeld matrix.
He provided that matrix when asked about the lack of evidence linking the supply of weapons of mass destruction to the Iraqi government and terrorist groups. His defiance was quite true. He said:
“Reports that something is not happening are always interesting to me because the known is known. We also know that there are unknowns, which means we know there are some things we don’t know, but there are also unknown unknowns, unknowns that we don’t know. And looking back at the history of our country and other free nations, it’s the latter category that’s the hardest.”
Lamy has pitched his comments in the realm of historical appraisal, but that’s just hindsight.
“Reports that something is not happening are always interesting to me because the known is known. We also know there are unknowns, which means we know there are some things we don’t know, but there are also unknown unknowns — we don’t know, we don’t know. Nothing.” — Donald Rumsfeld Credit: Scott Davis, U.S. Army
Always base your design on what you know and avoid what you don’t know. But it doesn’t prevent you from being bitten by what you don’t know and don’t know.
In today’s rapidly changing technological world (and believe me, it’s changing faster than it has in the last 40 years of my career), there are many unknowns that we didn’t know about. you will have to face it.
This is what all designers (engineers) live with, as great engineer and ill-timed president Herbert Hoover said:
“Compared to men in other professions, the great responsibility of an engineer is that his work is open to the public for all to see. He cannot bury his faults like a doctor, he cannot discuss them superficially, nor can he blame judges like a lawyer. He cannot, like a politician, hide his shortcomings by denouncing his opponents and hope that people will forget. There’s no denying he did it, and if his work doesn’t work out, he’s damned.
It is the Phantasmagoria that haunts his nights and haunts his days. He wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and in the morning writes something on paper that looks ridiculous. All day he trembles at the thought of the insects that inevitably appear to shake up the smooth completion. ”
Exactly the same sentiment, but much more elegant words. I mean “Phantasmagoria”. You can look it up in a dictionary, but best of all, you’ll hear it trying and failing to pronounce it.
An engineer’s life seems so hopeless, but there’s John Boyd. John Boyd developed the OODA loop. It was developed by him in fighter combat training and is now applied to other combat operations.It’s incredibly simple, but like ‘beams his cheep’, once dialed it becomes super powerful .
OODA stands for Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act, and immediately start over.
So this is what happens to cockpit newbies. tend to give
Instead, Jon Boyd trains novices to observe where the problem lies, perform the most effective option under the circumstances, take action, see what happened after the action, and all starts a loop of once again. It makes sense, but what’s really interesting is that whether the enemy is a bunch of other fighter pilots, or a bunch of pirates, or a sunken ship, if you can do a loop faster than them, really It’s about having fun.
Once you become familiar with this concept, you will realize that it is central to ship dynamic design, such as proper maneuverability and salvage-ready design, and that simple formulas can be used to evaluate design effectiveness and even compare designs. I noticed.
What’s even stranger is that OODA is, to some extent, a journey around a design spiral, but you can progress faster by focusing on avoiding the spiral faster. And this was voiced by another great engineer, Admiral Wayne Meyer, the father of the Aegis combat system. His motto was “build a little, test a little, learn a lot”.
In the context of design, he simply says: For better effect, run lots of fast OODAs and forget about running one big OODA. Because by the end of the big loop, technological advances will shoot you dead.
More interestingly, Boyd/Meyer makes it easier to manage the unknown. (A big step would mean skipping a lot of cracks in the pavement.) Taking small steps quickly can reveal unknowns and put you in control of the process… Increase the beam a little.
Like I said, I don’t remember who I learned from that beams are cheap. I remember where I learned to “build a little, test a little, learn a lot”. My father worked with a retired Admiral on a multi-billion dollar international naval bribery investigation. His father was a great engineer and he kept saying he wanted to meet him. Admiral and engineer are contradictory terms in my opinion. And while I shook hands and exchanged pleasant greetings when I met him at the office, I must admit that I didn’t make much of an effort to get to know him better.
A few months later my father told me that the Admiral had invited him as a guest to the destroyer’s christening. I said: “Okay, what’s the name of the ship?” My father said, “Wayne Meyer.” I said: “Yes, I know Wayne Meyer invited you, but what’s the name of the ship?” With ) repeating, I rushed to my computer and googled Wayne Meyer and found his mantra.
Unfortunately, I never got to see him again. But design truth never dies.
Every time I wrote a column, MREN agreed to make a small donation to an organization of my choice. For this column, I will select the American Society of Naval Architects scholarship fund. We need more good admiral engineers. www.navalengineers.org
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