Why Are Bows That Shape?

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In this video, we take a look at why the bow of ships is shaped the way it is.

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[thijsrikkerink]

"one thing all bows have in common, however, is that they're all at the front of the ship."

[michaelimbesi]

There’s also the so-called “Great Lakes bow”, which can be found on some of the very largest iron ore freighters on the Great Lakes. It’s semicircular. The ore freighters move slowly enough that their wave making resistance is small and skin friction becomes a much more significant factor. They are also limited in length by the Poe Lock. The semicircular bow enables them to minimize the wetted surface area while also maximizing the available displacement within the constraints of the locks.

[kilianortmann]

The Iowa class fast battleships have such a fine bow, that the first hull sections are actually negatively buoyant.
The bow by itself would just sink.

[Abdullah-mnsw]

Now I want to know why the stern of ships are so different, cut-off like in cruise ships while tapered in ww2 battleships.

[MoraFermi]

It's worth pointing that even things designed for absolute maximum speed underwater (like torpedoes or submarine launched ICBMs) have rather blunt, rounded bows/noses. In fact, making these noses more pointy would slow them down, due to greater wetted area and greater skin drag.

[lancepharker]

2 other items, a flared bow helps reduce the amount of water that ends up on the deck in severe weather, as well a very fine bow can be weak and prone to plunging in heavy seas. The Iowas suffered from this and could not maintain their high speed in rough weather.

[antonhengst]

We're concerns about submerged collision damage so instrumental in the development of the flared now? My understanding is that it was adopted to keep water of the deck in high sea states as vessel speed & stability increased. I have a hard time imagining that a reduction/avoidance in underwater damage during a collision was anything but a nice side effect of the new design, instead of a driving design concern

[nicocroteau-perreault]

One thing to consider when talking about sailboats is that many sailboats were designed withe the IOR rating system in mind. A system which gave boats a handicap rating based on their design and was popular in the late 20th century.

IOR was extremely flawed and one of its quirks is that it measured length of waterline instead of overall length. This drove designers to design bows with a huge amount of rake, the idea being that as soon as your boat heels your waterline length increases making you go faster, without increasing the rating.

[LaggerSVK]

its so interesting how there are so many valid bow design choices. Each one has its usage and ship type. The diversity is not seen so often in other areas. I never really thought much about ships from engineering perspective (I am mostly interested in aerospace) but ships fascinates me a little now thanks to this channel.

[Mohammad_Ali__]

The understanding of Physics when applied to all sorts of different ships is just beautiful to me. The same goes for knowing how Physics is applied to vehicles that work on land and especially air.

[kx]

Finally a new video. I’ve been watching all the old videos while I wait

[kirilkolev]

Could we get a video on the old sailing ship designs? The rounded hull segment was interesting, I never realized they needed ballast to stay upright as compared to modern day ships that had their buoyancy much helped by hull design.

[Sturmischer]

For a bit of military background on this, the tumblehome design of bow used to be very common on warships, but it was discovered that when a ship with a tumblehome design was damaged and started to take on water it had a greater chance of sinking due to the greater volume at the bottom of the ship, meaning a lot of buoyancy would be removed in the case of flooding. This is one of the reasons you stop seeing new tumblehome design ships after WW1 up until the recent failed Zumwalt class of Destroyers.

[Jeff-oeyx]

The "nose" of a submarine has nothing to do with pressure. It's literally just a fairing cover over the sonar dome to minimize drag and it's not even watertight. The sonar dome is the pressure boundary, though there is a watertight door at the rear of the dome that is normally rigged for dive while underway. At least on first-flight 688's

[seldoon_nemar]

Those X-Bow tugs are supposed to be really stable and just truck through the heaviest seas. Apparently they were inspired by Viking longships

[iainhunneybell]

Another reason for modern yacht to use a plumb bow v the steeply raked bows of some years ago, is it increases the waterline length and so hull speed. Now you’ve covered that as well 🙂

[JaapVersteegh]

I have the impression that the straight bow of modern sailing yachts is also just fashion coming from race yachts that have a vertical bow due to "box" rules in racing that favor a longest waterline within a box shape leading to a vertical bow, just like overhang in more classical yachts, that were based on rules in which waterline length was penalized so they tried to always reduce it leading to large overhang. This then also became fashionable for non racing yachts...

[chrisbn_az]

I deeply appreciate you sneaking in a smiley face at the two minute, six seconds mark.

[CHOHist]

The vertical bows of modern sailboats are designed to maximize the waterline at the expense of comfort. Foiling race boats have inverted "wave piercing" bows to avoid pitching up. Some older sailboats had long overhangs both bow and stern because of a set of complex rules of measuring the waterline. Effective waterline on 10 degrees heel was substantially longer than static.

[lifefindsaway]

Great video. I sailed a lot in my childhood, and noticed how my dads boat, with its square bow, cut into the waves while the nearby banana bowed hobie cats would bounced up and down.

It’s great to get a more detailed explanation and see the larger scale applications of the same principles