Throughout history, ships have had to battle waves, facing the risk of going past their tipping point and capsizing. Whether on a family cruise, participating in a sailing competition or serving on a military vessel, when people are out in open waters, it’s imperative to make sure somebody is working to make being out in the water it as safe as possible.
Naval architect and professor in the Department of Ocean Engineering at Texas A&M University, Dr. Jeffrey Falzarano has more than 30 years of experience researching and developing new ways to keep ships and their crews safe. His team’s current research focuses on two areas — designing wave-energy devices and researching how ships maneuver differently on waves in shallow and deep water.He spoke about his research on the latest episode of the Engineering SoundBytes podcast.
“I have two top Ph.D. students, and one is working on the tipping, or the capsizing, of a wave-energy device,” Falzarano said. “And then I have another student, and we're looking at ship maneuvering and waves. Ship maneuvering is typically studied with no waves and deep water. But when ships get into harbors, lots of interactions occur because of the shallow water. But, then, when ships are out in the ocean, they behave very differently because of the maneuvering in waves. And this has become a big issue for the Navy because the Navy has to operate in all different environments. But it's also an issue for the merchant vessels.”
在他的整个职业生涯,Falzarano应用他的expertise to several high-profile industry projects, such as the Crown Princess cruise ship incident, and working with entities such as the American Bureau of Shipping, the Office of Naval Research and Chevron.
“If you go out on a ship, on a cruise ship or small, high-speed boat or something like that, you would like to have some assurance that somebody has understood its response to large waves,” he said. “And, again, I recently had an opportunity to participate in a National Academy of Science Transportation Research Board study about ship stability regulations. And, essentially, what I tried to do in my participating in this committee was to put forth the fact that we understand a lot, but there are still many things that we don't understand and we shouldn't become complacent. We would like make sure that the U.S. remains active and a leader in this field.”
These comments are part of a larger conversation. To hear more, listen to this Engineering SoundBytes podcast episode on any major audio platform or on ourBuzzSprout homepage.