The Ship Model Forum

Does anyone out there know if the program can work on an iMac?

hmm... only just spotted this thread recently.

I have to agree, Springsharp is a spectacular time-waster... but its good fun. It is, as has been said, good at coming up with approximations to how a desing would behave. I have used the Breyer book to input figures for existing ships and I have to say it came out every time, with the design working correctly and usually estimating the characteristics of the ship such as sea-keeping quite well.

On another note, I use Springsharp in conjunction with photoshop to draw a fictional ship once I have ascertained the configuration is workable. Its even more fun when teamed up like that, and its far better than drawing something with the knowledge it might well be grossly overloaded, or snap in half the minute it hits a wave.

And I think its quite impressive that it varies the capability of the ship with the year it was laid down. I discovered a concept of mine suddendly became structurally weak when i changed the "Laid down" year from 1950 to 1920!!!!

Can I just end by asking who here has it? I dont see any harm in sharing designs or questions about the program as an occasional recreational thing when we are not into serious modelling.

It would be interesting to enter the data for US ships as published in Friedman's design series of books and compare the computed values to the published ones....

[quote="Anonymous"]One of the conundrums of wargaming is that the numbers don't tell the whole story, crew experience, crew training, morale, leadership, fatigue, weather, Murphy's Law and random events probably have more to do with the outcome of an engagement than who has the largest guns or the heaviest armor.

Marty[/quote]
Hear, hear!

Good to see you're still around, Marty!

Springsharp has some limited value for comparing various designs quickly, it's not perfect. You can get equally "good" comparative data by comparing displacement per foot, horsepower per ton, cost per foot and cost per ton apples to apples. Whether that translates into an "accurate" measure of combat efficiency is another story, simply evaluating by the statistics Yamato wins every engagement and Hood vs Bismarck is a draw every time.

One of the conundrums of wargaming is that the numbers don't tell the whole story, crew experience, crew training, morale, leadership, fatigue, weather, Murphy's Law and random events probably have more to do with the outcome of an engagement than who has the largest guns or the heaviest armor.

Marty

[quote="Werner"]I don't understand how it can get the prismatic coefficients unless you have input the hull lines. For example, a ship like [i]Iowa[/i] has an unusual bow and her actual data have to differ from a ship with a form like [i]Bismarck[/i], yet I would expect a program to supply very similar block values for computing wetted area and friction. They are not that far apart in size, after all.

W[/quote]

Once again, it is not a serious ship modelling tool, but some program that some guy wrote in his spare time. It (as far as I know) never claimed to accuratly model the ships, but it is rather a rule of thumb program to see how feasible your idea is based on previous ships. It works better with BB to CL sized ships and works very poorly with fast DD type ships.

Vladimir

Actually, I'd say Vladimir is spot on - this was never meant as a tool for serious ship design. It's just a nice little program to test whether your homegrown designs won't sink the moment they leave the pier.

For that purpose - testing basic seaworthiness of a design, room arrangements etc - it's quite good.

Jorit

I don't understand how it can get the prismatic coefficients unless you have input the hull lines. For example, a ship like [i]Iowa[/i] has an unusual bow and her actual data have to differ from a ship with a form like [i]Bismarck[/i], yet I would expect a program to supply very similar block values for computing wetted area and friction. They are not that far apart in size, after all.

W

What exactly were you expecting out of it? The guy who wrote it wrote is specifically to sim never existing warships for fun. It was never intended to be a serious ship modelling tool. And it is fun if you like to play warious online simulations...

Vladimir

sounds like a pointles waist of time to me, but, I am biased, there are more important things afoot besides "make beleive"

Hi guys,

I'm going to assume that some of you know about Springsharp. [url]http://www.springsharp.com/[/url]

It claims, [i]"SpringSharp allows you to design "what-if" and "never built" warships between 1850 and 1950 using little more than the specifications in books like Janes Fighting Ships, Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships etc. It applies parametric formulas as used by professional Naval Architects (Mumford, Parsons, Holtrop & Mennen etc) as well as empirical data based on research on ships (Liners & Warships) of the period to give a soundly grounded and scientific basis to your designs. SpringSharp produces a written report in far more detail than the above resources. These reports can be used on various internet based discussion groups such as:

Warships1 Discussion Boards
Wesworld
Warship Projects [/i]

Well, it sounded pretty good, so I got it. Then I had to download and install Microsoft Net Framework to make it work. (now I have to actually log into my computer every time I turn it on)

Anyways, here's the big question:
Does Springsharp have any useful purpose aside from generating numbers to use a ship in a sim/game? It seems to give me very little info that I didn't already have and even less that's of any real use.

Here's the Springsharp sample 'Report' on Bismarck:

[i]Bismarck, Deutschland Battleship laid down 1936

Displacement:
40,064 t light; 42,084 t standard; 46,674 t normal; 50,346 t full load

Dimensions: Length overall / water x beam x draught
820.21 ft / 792.49 ft x 118.11 ft x 30.51 ft (normal load)
250.00 m / 241.55 m x 36.00 m x 9.30 m

Armament:
8 - 14.96" / 380 mm guns (4x2 guns), 1,763.70lbs / 800.00kg shells, 1934 Model
Breech loading guns in turrets (on barbettes)
on centreline ends, evenly spread, 2 raised mounts - superfiring
12 - 5.91" / 150 mm guns (6x2 guns), 102.98lbs / 46.71kg shells, 1928 Model
Breech loading guns in turrets (on barbettes)
on side, evenly spread
16 - 4.13" / 105 mm guns (8x2 guns), 35.32lbs / 16.02kg shells, 1933 Model
Anti-aircraft guns in deck mounts with hoists
on side, evenly spread, all raised mounts
16 - 1.46" / 37.0 mm guns (8x2 guns), 1.55lbs / 0.70kg shells, 1930 Model
Anti-aircraft guns in deck mounts
on side, evenly spread, all raised mounts
16 - 0.79" / 20.0 mm guns (10 mounts), 0.29lbs / 0.13kg shells, 1930 Model
Anti-aircraft guns in deck mounts
on side, evenly spread, 14 raised mounts
Weight of broadside 15,940 lbs / 7,230 kg
Shells per gun, main battery: 120

Armour:
- Belts: Width (max) Length (avg) Height (avg)
Main: 12.6" / 320 mm 562.34 ft / 171.40 m 16.40 ft / 5.00 m
Ends: 2.76" / 70 mm 229.33 ft / 69.90 m 9.51 ft / 2.90 m
0.82 ft / 0.25 m Unarmoured ends
Upper: 5.71" / 145 mm 562.34 ft / 171.40 m 7.22 ft / 2.20 m
Main Belt covers 109 % of normal length

- Torpedo Bulkhead:
1.77" / 45 mm 562.34 ft / 171.40 m 30.05 ft / 9.16 m

- Gun armour: Face (max) Other gunhouse (avg) Barbette/hoist (max)
Main: 14.2" / 360 mm 7.09" / 180 mm 13.4" / 340 mm
2nd: 3.94" / 100 mm 1.30" / 33 mm 3.15" / 80 mm
3rd: 0.79" / 20 mm 0.39" / 10 mm 0.79" / 20 mm

- Armour deck: 5.02" / 128 mm, Conning tower: 13.78" / 350 mm

Machinery:
Oil fired boilers, steam turbines,
Geared drive, 3 shafts, 137,994 shp / 102,944 Kw = 28.67 kts
Range 8,525nm at 19.00 kts
Bunker at max displacement = 8,261 tons

Complement:
1,587 - 2,064

Cost:
£18.680 million / $74.720 million

Distribution of weights at normal displacement:
Armament: 1,903 tons, 4.1 %
Armour: 17,160 tons, 36.8 %
- Belts: 6,165 tons, 13.2 %
- Torpedo bulkhead: 1,108 tons, 2.4 %
- Armament: 3,305 tons, 7.1 %
- Armour Deck: 6,198 tons, 13.3 %
- Conning Tower: 385 tons, 0.8 %
Machinery: 3,872 tons, 8.3 %
Hull, fittings & equipment: 17,046 tons, 36.5 %
Fuel, ammunition & stores: 6,610 tons, 14.2 %
Miscellaneous weights: 83 tons, 0.2 %

Overall survivability and seakeeping ability:
Survivability (Non-critical penetrating hits needed to sink ship):
79,862 lbs / 36,225 Kg = 47.7 x 15.0 " / 380 mm shells or 14.4 torpedoes
Stability (Unstable if below 1.00): 1.26
Metacentric height 9.7 ft / 3.0 m
Roll period: 15.9 seconds
Steadiness - As gun platform (Average = 50 %): 50 %
- Recoil effect (Restricted arc if above 1.00): 0.30
Seaboat quality (Average = 1.00): 1.05

Hull form characteristics:
Hull has a flush deck
Block coefficient: 0.572
Length to Beam Ratio: 6.71 : 1
'Natural speed' for length: 28.15 kts
Power going to wave formation at top speed: 50 %
Trim (Max stability = 0, Max steadiness = 100): 47
Bow angle (Positive = bow angles forward): 32.00 degrees
Stern overhang: 9.68 ft / 2.95 m
Freeboard (% = measuring location as a percentage of overall length):
- Stem: 28.87 ft / 8.80 m
- Forecastle (16 %): 21.16 ft / 6.45 m
- Mid (50 %): 18.60 ft / 5.67 m
- Quarterdeck (13 %): 21.16 ft / 6.45 m
- Stern: 22.31 ft / 6.80 m
- Average freeboard: 20.82 ft / 6.35 m
Ship tends to be wet forward

Ship space, strength and comments:
Space - Hull below water (magazines/engines, low = better): 71.1 %
- Above water (accommodation/working, high = better): 159.1 %
Waterplane Area: 66,686 Square feet or 6,195 Square metres
Displacement factor (Displacement / loading): 116 %
Structure weight / hull surface area: 196 lbs/sq ft or 959 Kg/sq metre
Hull strength (Relative):
- Cross-sectional: 0.99
- Longitudinal: 1.07
- Overall: 1.00
Hull space for machinery, storage, compartmentation is excellent
Room for accommodation and workspaces is excellent[/i]


So, what are the opinions on Springsharp?

Bill

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