Re: [DSII] Sinking hover tanks

On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 11:53:07AM -0400, Roger Books wrote:
>Some time ago we had a discussion about heavy hover tanks over water.
The 
>conclusion was 
>that if the tank massed enough that the pressure/area (PSI in US terms)
was 
>too great the tank
>would sink while furiously blowing bubbles from under its' skirt.
Basicly a 
>Hammer's Slammer 
>hover-tank would probably sink.

ISTR that this does indeed happen in one of the stories.

>The thing we didn't discuss was how movement would affect this. If the
tank 
>were moving at
>100KPH would this affectively give it a greater area under the skirts?
>
>Any ideas?

Depends on the design, but generally the skirts are designed to keep
outside air away from the cushion as much as possible. I very much doubt
that compression under the leading edge will be significant compared
with compression from the main lift fan.

On the other hand, a vehicle could be _designed_ for this mode of
motion; googling for "ekranoplan" will show a lot of vehicles that were
quite specifically intended to operate over water.

R