View Single Post
  #12   Report Post  
posted to rec.boats.cruising,rec.boats.building
Wayne.B Wayne.B is offline
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 10,492
Default Roll Stabilization Tanks

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 18:01:09 -0500, "Roger Long"
wrote:

Any suggestions for a starting point?


Yes, start by deciding whether you are willing to invest a lot in
construction and additional weight with it's attendant increase in fuel
consumption to make things just a little better. If it's worth it just to
reduce motion by 10 - 15 percent, you can probably do something.


Thanks, some interesting points there. Weight could largely turn out
to be a non-issue if used only at anchor or as a backup to the dynamic
stabilizer system (Naiads). It would be easy enough to pump some salt
water up into the tanks when I wanted to use them, and drain it back
out afterwards.

I was thinking of buying a couple of fiberglass dock boxes from West
Marine and cross connecting them with PVC pipes. The system could be
tuned by restricting flow or adding additional pipes. I have no idea
how to calculate optimal starting pipe size(s) however.

Just for the sake of argument, lets assume 400 total gallons and a
natural roll period of about 3 seconds. Given a 5 degree roll, most
of that water would have to flow to the downhill tank in about 1.5
seconds if I'm conceptualizing this correctly.