Defeating waves through size?

Syndicate replies to “Defeating waves through size?” topic Wed, 05/28/2008 - 08:56 — Herman Melville

A large enough floating structure would not be rocked by normal waves. What is the most economical route to a structure of this class?

‹ Mechanics of the spar design Cities beneath the sea floor? ›

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
Wed, 05/28/2008 - 09:06 — Herman Melville

For example,

As a thought experiment, consider a colossal ferrocement sphere floating around in the ocean. Its enormous weight and size mean that even the largest waves hardly move it at all.

Wed, 05/28/2008 - 09:28 — Jesrad

Cylinder, not sphere

This is the route I've been considering recently with the flattened truncated pyramid design. Being not built for speed but strength and durability out of hundreds of tons of ferrocement, a large and massive enough structure has a very large period of rolling and heaving, and is pretty much immune to waves.

Building it more economically means using cheap and massive material, and distributing the maximum of that mass at the sides (it should be hollow in the middle, but reinforced enough not to collapse or fail). A sphere is not ideal, because the stresses from waves are concentrated on a shallow band and inexistent at the top and bottom: a cylinder is more adequate IMO.

Wed, 05/28/2008 - 12:19 — Carl Pålsson

A really large flat box out

  • A really large flat box out of ferrocement. Make the thickness (height) large enough so that the biggest (within reason) waves cannot wash over it or drop lower than the bottom of the box and you should be fine, no?
  • Like so: http://wiki.seasteading.org/index.php/Image:Bigbox.PNG

 

Wed, 05/28/2008 - 14:16 — Jesrad

It is possible also to use

It is possible also to use thin metal spars to rise the "ground" from the box and leave a gap for waves to pass through, like this.