Bow wave

A bow wave is the wave that forms at the bow of a ship when it moves through the water.[1] As the bow wave spreads out, it defines the outer limits of a ship's wake. A large bow wave slows the ship down, is a risk to smaller boats, and in a harbor can damage shore facilities and moored ships. Therefore, ship hulls are generally designed to produce as small a bow wave as possible.

Bow wave of a canal barge

Description
Bow wave of the USS Connecticut, on her speed trials in 1906 or 1907.

The size of the bow wave is a function of the speed of the ship, its draft, surface waves, water depth, and the shape of the bow. A ship with a large draft and a blunt bow will produce a large wave, and ships that plane over the water surface will create smaller bow waves. Bow wave patterns are studied in the field of computational fluid dynamics.

The bow wave carries energy away from the ship at the expense of its kinetic energy—it slows the ship. A major goal of naval architecture is therefore to reduce the size of the bow wave and improve the ship's fuel economy. Modern ships are commonly fitted with a bulbous bow to achieve this.

A bow wave forms at the head of a swimmer moving through water. The trough of this wave is near the mouth of the swimmer and helps the swimmer to inhale air to breathe just by turning their head.

A similar thing occurs when an airplane travels at the speed of sound. The overlapping wave crests disrupt the flow of air over and under the wings. Just as a boat can easily travel faster than the wave it produces, an airplane with sufficient power can travel faster than the speed of sound (supersonic).


USS Northampton wearing a painted fake bow wave used to give the impression of high speed at all times (1941)
gollark: It does some random stuff and prints out debug info.
gollark: I made a LOØÞ:```04 b0 00 0804 10 01 ff04 e0 ff 0203 e0 a0 0004 de 03 0102 c0 a0 0002 dd a0 00ff 00 00 0004 aa 00 0107 ab 00 00```
gollark: Hmm, apparently my JLT instruction is not JLTing.
gollark: I dislike it.
gollark: In my case it's opcode, 2 4-bit registers, and a 16-bit constant.

See also

References
  1. Dictionary. "Bow Wave". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 3 December 2011.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.