ship design

A new solution to an age-old equation can improve ship efficiency

It’s been this way for 127 years— the V-shaped wake pattern behind a ship moving in a straight line always has the same central angle. But a Norwegian armed with a pen and a piece of paper has discovered that in certain situations, a boat’s wake can actually be found in front of the boat.

The Towing Tank turns 75

NTH, Norway’s first technical university and one of the main predecessors to NTNU, SINTEF and MARINTEK, opened in Trondheim in 1910. Just three years later its scientists began to think very big – 170 metres big.

It’s called a goat boat, but it’s no goat

Are older, classical boat designs really better? High-tech testing in the Ship Towing Tank at the Norwegian Marine Technology Research Institute in Trondheim pits a 16th century classical rowboat against its newer, easier-to-build cousin.

Celebrity ice

Not since the Titanic has a block of ice been quite so famous. In early June, Discovery Channel Canada came to NTNU’s Structural Impact Laboratory (SIMLab) to watch ice researchers from NTNU’s Sustainable Arctic Marine and Coastal Technology programme use a giant machine to simulate what happens when a ship slams into an iceberg.

Crash course

As the Arctic Ocean’s summer ice cap melts away, new trans-Arctic shipping routes will open and see a growing amount of shipping traffic. But what’s the best way to protect ships and other ocean structures if they crash into icebergs?