FACULT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Project 1 : Design Make and Test Project

SEMO1332 - SECTION 01

Name of the group Hercules

Group Member CHIN SEONG SIN (A20EM0038)
ABDUL AZIM BIN ABDUL MUTTALIB (A20EM0001)
FAIZ NUR AKMAL BIN MOHD FAIZAL (A20EM0053)
Date of submission 01/04/2021
Section 01
Lecturer’s name DR NIK MOHD RIDZUAN
 Test project of Hercules vessel

Abstract
The purpose of this project is to design and construct a buoyant vessel to test it’s
stability assessment. The criteria of the hull were choose carefully base on the factor that
directly influence the buoyant force. Simulating the real life scenario of heavy loaded ship
pushing near maximum deadweight tonnage(DWT) while having the stability of the ship in
mind is the scenario of this project purpose.

The prototype of the vessel that will be construct for this project is name after
Hercules the Greek divine hero as a reference to how strong the legend is and Very Large
Crude Carrier (VLCC) capability of transporting heavy load. The providing ship particulars
for the project are as below.

I) LOA = 0.50-0.60 m
II) DEXT = 0.10-0.15 m
III) BEXT = 0.15-0.20 m

The particulars chose for the design of Hercules are LOA=0.59, DEXT=0.15, BEXT=0.20.

The reason for the particulars are chosen in order to obtain maximum buoyant force
obtainable by the ship vessel. According to the Archimedes’ principle an object completely
submerged or partially in a fluid at rest has an equal opposite upward force known as buoyant
force and it is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced. Therefore the higher the volume of
fluid displaced the stronger the buoyant force is hence the bigger surface area is require.
Final design drawings and specifications
After deciding the final design of the model comes the discussion on method to assemble the
ship. There are 4 methods considered to create the ship surface in order to tackle problems of
having large gap or holes as well cardboard bend and wrinkle due to less flexibility of the
10mm thick cardboard. The final method that tested out and achieve dependable result is
having 3 pieces of surface despite slight gap that is obvious on the surface.The three pieces
surface that were decided on show promising curve and less resembling a box. The three
pieces method also have the criteria of straight rigid surface. This prevent excessive bending
that could permanently misshape the support structure.

VLCC design under the process of unroll Three pieces surface method

As the project approach finalization the design is complete and fully inspect and the criteria
will be explain from the view of internal part of the ship and external,the surface. Minor
changes were made after the try and error process and the main changes are the particular of
the ship in order to avoid the measurement error and exceed the limitation set for the
competition.

Our project design is heavily base on the VLCC model therefore they share multiple similar
criteria. First similarity is the straight bow, providing the ship with straight edge that any ship
require. Next, the flat keel of the ship. A flat surface especially in the midship and becomes
lesser flat as approaching the end of the ship. This design is crucial to provide all the surface
area require to increase the buoyant force therefore higher Dead Weight Tonnage (DWT) can
be acquire. At the aft part of the ship the model have a transom stern. It is a stern dedicated to
simple construction and improve water flow.
 Moving to the storage platform of the ship is that is it located in the midship to achieve the
stability required when is loaded and avoid aft or forward trim when it is fully loaded as it
could lead to the ship to topple or sink in the worst case. All of the characteristic are design
with stability and heavy load capability in mind.
Moving to the inner design of the project the component used is 9 stacked support and 1
perpendicular long support. The support used is to maintain the ship structure as the
horizontal support the port and starboard surface. The surface are locked with the support
using the joint method and in addition to make the support structure a perpendicular long
support is joint together. This lock the horizontal support in place while preventing them from
falling off. The support were follow out in the midship to make space for load and act as a
storage platform.

There are a total of 8 stations and are located at the Length between perpendicular(LBP) of
59.2cm. The storage platform as stated to be situated in midship is at station 5 with the
particulars of 15cm x 12cm at the middle of depth without being covered by any material.
Load store at the midship prevent drastic change of centre of flotation and prevent trim.

Cutout template

Horizontal and vertical support structure Horizontal stacked support

Perpendicular support with platform Ship support after joint locked

The ship's particular is adjusted to comply with the marginal human error.
LOA - 0.59m
BREADTH - 0.2m
DEPTH - 0.15m

Below are the measurement proof that our model are abiding the limitation particulars set.
Notes : T-shape ruler length - 60cm

LOA BEXT DEXT

Construction process

1. Prepare cardboard of 10mm thick and transparent 24mm cellophane tape.

2. Print out template for ship support structure and horizontal and vertical structure with the
decided particulars.
3. Overlay the template on the cardboard and cut out the ship support structure.
4. Stack the horizontal support structure and insert to the vertical support structure joint.
5. Hollow out the midship support and support at station 4 and 6 to install platform of
15cm x 12cm big.at the depth of 0..75cm.
6. Unroll the ship design model on rhino and print the template.
7. Cut out the cardboard with the port, starboard and flat keel template.
8. Joint together the port and starboard surface with the joint lock on the support structure.
9. Join together the flat keel surface with the starboard and port surface with cellophane
tape.
10. Craft 10 container with the dimension of 5cm x 4cm x 5cm.

1 Prepare 10mm thick cardboard 2 Print out template

 3 Cut out the support structure 4 Stack the support structure

5&7 Hollow the mid ship and joint the

8 Port and starboard surface jointed
support structure

9 point the flat keel surface with port 10 Craft 12 container box
and starboard surface
 The design is printed out and cut on the thin cardboard to get more load of the green bean.
The card board is shape and joined using cellophane tape. A 3d model of VLCC from the
maxsurf software is used and set a DWL of 7.5 cm in order to obtain the station line spacing
as well as the midship section. We resize the VLCC according to the maximum specification
so can support the maximum load.

The intersection design for both station and keel so they could be joined easily and provide
better support. Pen knife is used to make an accurate rough cut on the surface of the
cardboard follow by the deep cut by using longer cutter. Next, multiple adjustment of the size
of surface by trial and error so it can fit with the frame and keel.
Expectation
From the pretest of the cardboard ship in the water by using plastic wrap, it function really
well with draft about 0.7-1.0cm and can float exceed 20 second easily with load of 12
containers. We wish to get the same result without using plastic wrap as the cardboard will be
wet by the water and become weak and risk of water entering.
 Problem faced
The surface construction is quite hard when we want to unroll the curve vessel in Rhino,
unrollsrf function didnt work for the curve surface and the other function like smash and
unrollsrfuv will some how form a smaller or bigger irregular shape for the ship hull and is
hard to be achieved by using cardboard.so i try to print a almost the same shape for the hull
and adjust the size of the surface by comparing the cardboard frame. It takes multiple times to
trial and error and eventually done nicely.
-the surface is hard to join together by just only cellotape, so instead of using cellotape that is
parallel to the joint of two cardboard, we use the perpendicular method to put on the cellotape
on the joint and in the meantime pullover the cardboard to minimise the gap between it.
- the lock method is quite weak, when doing several time of the surface installation, the lock
of the frame become weak, so i use cello tape to strengthen the stacked frame lock to prevent
it from tearing out from the frame.
- the keel also become weak, also use cello tapes to strengthen it.
-There is some error occur in the specification of the LOA in the final product as the process
of bending cardboard shorten the hull surface.