Full Scale Planing Experiment and Analysis

Experimental planing research outside the confines of the traditional towing tank laboratory is difficult to conduct. Many factors such as cross wind, random waves, clouds, curious on-lookers, and fuel consumption, which are absent in the towing tank, complicate full scale experimentation. With little control over these outside factors, this type of experimental research becomes an arduous process. This paper describes the experimental procedures used to determine the hydrodynamic pressure distribution on a 21 ft. competition ski boat. Specifically, manometry was used for pressure.