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IBEX 2009 Seminar 'Props, Tunnels and Stern Geometry Optimization'
by Robert S. Kaidy  of Ocean5 and Greg Platzer

Together with Rob Kaidy of Ocean5 Inc., Greg Platzer presented a hallmark seminar, “Props, Tunnels and Stern Geometry Optimization” to a packed audience at IBEX 2009.  Rob began by presenting a design procedure, based on first order semi-empirical design guidelines, which consistently results in good performing boats.  He concluded by presenting an example of one of his designs, the inboard version of the center-console SeaVee 39 fishing boat.  Greg Platzer then continued the seminar with a brief introduction to modern CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamic) methods and presented a procedure to analytically evaluate the resistance, powering, wake inflow, cavitation and propeller induced vibration levels of a given boat configuration, using the SeaVee 39 as an example.  Greg then proceeded to compare the CFD performance characteristics of the as-built SeaVee 39 with two extreme variants.  Finally, based on the results of the variant study, he presented the performance characteristics of an optimized stern configuration.  This tunnel configuration, optimized using the results of the CFD analysis, showed a 10% reduction in overall resistance with a corresponding 2 kt increase in top speed relative to the baseline as-built SeaVee 39.