First tank number for the survey-boat hull model: the form factor was too big

A small survey-boat hull model checked against one published Wigley tank test: 20% high with its central form factor, within a few per cent with none.

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The marine-hull programme asks which hull carries a small survey boat furthest per kWh. For a week its resistance model had never met a tank measurement, because the data hosts refused the session. This run found one published point through a Zenodo paper: the Wigley hull of Ju (1983), as quoted by Wang et al. (2017), total-resistance coefficient 4.16e-3 at Froude number 0.267.

The numbers. Michell thin-ship wave resistance plus the ITTC 1957 friction line with no form factor is within +1 to +5% of the tank value at 10 to 20 C (the water temperature is not given). The programme's central form factor of 0.25 is 18 to 25% too high. The form factor that fits is about zero, below the 0.10 to 0.40 box the earlier sweeps used. The exact Wigley surface (2.381 m²) matches Ju's wetted-area formula (2.380 m²), which supports the assumed 4 m by 0.4 m by 0.25 m geometry.

What it means. For a slender hull the earlier range figures are conservative by up to about a fifth, and hull rankings, which use the same constant for every hull, keep their order. This is one speed from a second-hand source, and one speed cannot separate the wave term from the form factor, so it does not validate Michell on its own. The next step is a resistance curve over Froude number. The log, script and result file are in the marine-hull programme.

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