and poor required larger and faster ships plus the need for better ships on the Empire and South American routes.
• The steamturbine developed by Parsons. • The development of the large Diesel engine led by Germany. • Not only did the Diesel need oil fuel but oil-fired steamboilers had huge advantages over coal for warships.
• Thebig gunBattleship, the torpedoandthepractical submarine transformed navies.
Merchant shipyards were either flat-out meeting the demand for
ships before, during and immediately aſter both world wars or facing closure. Tere was little incentive to invest in new facilities and few passenger liners built mostly as ‘make work’ projects. Te design of warships between the wars was more challenging,
meeting Treaty limitations, building and modernising battleships and exploiting air power at sea. Larger surface warships were equipped with one or two aircraſt and the concept of a ship to carry aircraſt as the main armament emerged. Te design of aircraſt able to cope with the ship interface and the marine environment was difficult. Te USN having retained its own naval air force coped well. But with the RN air arm subsumed into the RAF at the end of World War I, maritime air was well down the priority list. During WWII, production was paramount for merchant ships
and escorts including aircraſt carriers plus submarines. Tere was a new requirement to transport large armies by sea to heavily defended enemy coasts, needing innovative ships of all types and sizes and mobile harbours.
Education and Training
Te period saw little change to the well-established systems of apprentice training in shipyards and dockyards with ‘degree’ courses offered by provincial colleges and Naval Colleges to the brightest apprentices. Te small numbers produced were adequate for WWI but in the naval area, naval architects as both designers and dockyard managers were in short supply prior to WWII due to inter-war cuts. New recruitment sources had to be found.
1950 – 2010
For the commercial naval architect, there were new challenges, including:
• Passenger liners, superseded by aircraft, evolved intomassive cruise ships to meet a worldwide tourist market.
• Global trade in bulk foodstuffs, minerals and oil led to ships many times the size common in 1950’s.
• The carriage of general cargo moved from the modest sized, break bulk, tramp ships to the massive container ships.
• Vehicular cargoes required large Ro-Ro ferries and car carriers.
• High-speed ferries exploited novel hull forms, lightweight materials and propulsion plants.
• Rigs and ships to meet the needs of the offshore oil & gas industry had to be designed, built, maintained and disposed.
• The exploration of the seabed required unmanned vehicles able to go to depths, which were difficult by manned craſt and impossible by divers.
• Losses of tankers causing widespread oil pollution and losses of ferries and passenger ships with large loss of life resulted in a deep review of overall safety. International and national organisations were set up. More recently there have been demands to reduce air and wastewater pollution.
• Merchant shipbuildingmoved to cheaper locations. For the warship naval architect, the 1950’s saw the start of the
Cold War, with naval requirements dominated by the deployment of nuclear weapons in surface ships and submarines. In addition there were material advances:
• Stronger steels overcame limitations in the diving depth of submarines and aluminium and glass-reinforced plastics reduced superstructure weight.
• Nuclear power enabled the true submarine to be realised and surface warships to have unlimited endurance.
• Air independent power plants gave submersibles higher speeds and better underwater endurance.
• Themarinisation of aircraft gas turbines freed designers from the high maintenance steam plant.
• High performance andVSTOL aircraft and helicopters became available.
• Electronics led to guided and ballistic missiles and better radar, sonar, and communications.
• Behaviour of explosive blast and shock waves had to be understood as did the transmission of noise underwater.
From the 1970s, the computer revolutionised design,
production and maintenance. Many design variants can be created but time can be wasted in evaluation and designs even aſter being built can be rejected. For warships this has led to building legacy designs and modernising older ships to avoid loss of numbers.
Education and Training
Five events may be seen to have dramatically changed education and training in the UK and the role of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects:
• The expansion ofUniversity-based education led to the closure of government-funded Colleges such as RNC Greenwich.
• The regulation of professional engineers changed from stand-alone Institutions to a quasi-federal structure under an Engineering Council setting industry-wide standards.
• The rapid expansion of CAD/CAM and new technologies required new subjects to be covered plus the need for Continuing Professional Development.
• Cuts in shipyard workforces led to reductions or closures of apprentice schemes.
• Knowledge dissemination by Institutions moved from the topic-based learned papers to the subject-based conferences.
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