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Kayak and Canoe Design Bulletin Board
Re: I would like to design a kayak
Posted By: Marc Brune In Response To: Re: I would like to design a kayak (Matt)
Date: Wednesday, 22 September 1999, at 7:30 p.m.
Thanks for your note. I hope you don't mind me trying to pick your brain for a few more answers.. Just to let you know where I'm at, I am a senior mechanical engineering student at the University of Portland (Oregon). A friend and I are both kayakers and we thought it would be fun to design and build a whitewater kayak for our senior project. So, as far as fluid and calculus goes, we have at least a pretty good base of working knowledge.
What I was wondering is how you decided upon a shape for your boat. We have started by looking at current boat designs to try to get a feel for what the state of the art is. We'd like to try to go paddle a Wavesport X, maybe a Necky Gliss or Bliss, a Dagger Infrared and maybe a Riot Glide (if we can muster up the courage to get on a river in that boat).
Are there any computer modeling programs that you could suggest for designing the hull and deck of a kayak? I'd be looking for a program which could tell me about the fluid properties of the design (drag, bouyancy, initial/secondary stability, ease of turning, etc.) We'll probably use some type of finite element modeling to analyze stresses in the body.
Also, what kind of material did you use for your boat? We are considering kevlar, carbon fiber, fiberglass, and possibly a thin aluminum sheet for the hull. What we'd really like to do though is build a tougher plastic boat. I was thinking that there might be some thermosets we could use that would eliminate needing an oven to cure the plastic. Can you give me any suggestions here?
Thanks again, Marc Brune
> Marc, I am an areospace engineer and have recently designed and built the
> hull for a white water kayak. It took me over a year to design and 4
> months to build. If you don't extensive knowledge of calculus and fluid
> mechanics, my only sugestion is to design a symetric hull. By using
> symetrey, you will avoid the problem of balancing the hull such that both
> bow and stern are well above the water line. From the laws of fluid
> meckanics, a symetric hull is automatically balanced. I recomend that the
> backrest be around 20" behind the beam. I also recomend that your
> first boat should be no shorter than 9'6".> Good Luck, Matt
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