Math Is Fun Forum

zxyrus

Member

Registered: 2009-07-26

Posts: 3

Surface area computation

Hi there! Anybody has an idea how to do an accurate or near to accurate computation for the total ship or vessel outside hull surface area considering its various shapes and sizes?

karney

Guest

Re: Surface area computation

Well, you would have to break down the surface area into parts and then add them all up to get total surface area.  You would end up breaking it down primarily into rectangles, triangles and squares (some circles and partial circles).

karney

Guest

Re: Surface area computation

Of course you could get the biggest chunk of the job done by measuring out the biggest rectangle you could on one side of the ship and then calculate that area X 2.

zxyrus

Member

Registered: 2009-07-26

Posts: 3

Re: Surface area computation

Thanks for your reply, Karney.

I'm also trying to figure it out how to do an easy way to get a ship measurement in accurate or near to accurate on big vessels with about LOA of 110m. Maybe there's a standard formula that  people enegage in shipbuilding or shiprepair uses and I cannot find them on the net.

Other suggestions are still welcome?

Ricky

Moderator

Registered: 2005-12-04

Posts: 3,791

Re: Surface area computation

There is rarely a formula used for such things.  Not everything is easy, and in fact, most aren't.  Ships all come in various shapes with different parameters, I would imagine that there is not easy way of doing this.

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"In the real world, this would be a problem.  But in mathematics, we can just define a place where this problem doesn't exist.  So we'll go ahead and do that now..."

zxyrus

Member

Registered: 2009-07-26

Posts: 3

Re: Surface area computation

Thanks a lot for the response, Ricky. I guess I'll just stick to Karney's suggestion to chunk the ship's shape and get it individually then sum up the areas to get the overall.

Thanks a lot to this forum and best regards to all.