LIGHTWEIGHT MANUFACTURING
Griffon’s support team work with operators across the world to provide engineering and operator training
tend to drive up costs, efficiencies in design are yielding better cost- effectiveness and value for money.
HOW HAS CRAFT DESIGN CHANGED? Hovercraft have evolved from designs based on aircraft in the 1960-80s to designs taking more account of the marine environment and regulations that were more like small fast boats from then until around 2015. Since then our latest designs have returned to using more aeronautical engineering combined with the latest automotive engineering developments all of which we specialise in adapting for the marine environment and legislative structure. We look to develop structures
as lightweight as possible whilst maintaining structural integrity to provide the highest possible payload for users. One significant latest change has been the introduction of aluminium adhesive bonding. In the 995ED the hull is completely adhesively bonded; allowing us to save 30% in overall
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❝ Looking to the future, new technology to allow for fully electric hovercraft is approaching
craft weight with less than 1mm distortion to the hull form.
IS THE DESIGN PROCESS CHANGING? Design software such as Solidworks allows us to fully 3D model a craft, or sections of a craft. This brings several advantages, one being different systems can be brought together within one modelling space to check for any clashes or interference enabling any issues to be ironed out within the design team and are not passed onto production. Computational Fluid Dynamics is also a tool used widely within the
design department. The tool is used to both develop and improve our products as well as helping out customers with specific requests they may have on their craft. CFD allows us to visualise and determine how a change to a craft will effect it aerodynamically and more importantly what impact that change has to the flow of air entering the duct or lift system. We have considered 3D printing for
some specialist components but at this time we are not yet assured about material strength capabilities available for use in production hovercraft. We do not typically design with any bespoke small plastic components and
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