Hans O S Küffner-McCauley

Hydrodynamics of Speed on the Water Hans O S Küffner-McCauley

High speed boats necessarily use surface-piercing propellers, but there is very little literature available on surface piercing. My aim is to quantify what I have understood about speed on the water from theory and practice combined. I'm uniquely qualified to write about the combination of fast planing hulls, propellers, and hydrodynamics. I know how a race boat feels under all conditions from 60-85 mph from driving successfully in competition. I have reworked and improved many existing propellers for racing and also for better performance on sport boats. I do my own work on boat bottoms, propellers, and motors. I've set nine outboard speed records, have won four national championships, and I was twice US-1 in my class. On the other side of the coin I'm physics professor with adequate theoretical background in vortex theory and hydrodynamics more generally. The completely new results, not found elsewhere in the literature, are: power-diameter-RPM scaling for propellers and comparison with speed record data, inadequacy of all available measurements of torque coefficients in surface piercing, the difference between efficient surface piercing and supercavitation, complete set of equations (using the mean camber surface to define pitch and camber) for the design of a cleaver from hub to tip, definition of path pitch, use of path pitch to determine the parabolic camber, photos of 3D CAD drawings and 3D printed out models, idealized calculations of torque coefficients and efficiencies, speed-power- weigh scaling law and comparison with existing speed records, clear definition of lift onset, clear definition of planning, lift on monohulls and tunnels, center of pressure and stability of tunnels, estimation of lift coefficient for a v-bottom/tunnel sponson and comparison with data