Meeting Information
Videos of the David Taylor Model Basin
August 19, 2020Virtual
Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic all public tours have been
temporarily cancelled until further notice.
As an alternative we will watch videos of the David Taylor Model
Basin from the internet. Here are a few that are worth
watching although they are
not especially long (5-10 min) and often seem to have been made with
the Navy's Congressional patrons in mind. :)
1) This is on the the Model Basin itself and is about 6 minutes long:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
2) These two videos (6 and 7 minutes resp.) are on the equally impressive
Maneuvering and Seakeeping Basin (MASK) Facility located at the western
end of the Carderock site. The second one deals specifically with the
upgrade of its wave making machine a few years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/
https://www.youtube.com/
3) I stumbled on this interesting little gem of a whole 8 minutes duration
about the Magnetic Fields Laboratory which tests ship models for their
EM signature and degaussing issues.
https://www.youtube.com/
4) Now this is something for the *real* old-timers in our group! It
seems to be a Navy news reel from the WWII years showing model testing
of the LCI (Landing Craft Infantry) design. Apart from the obligatory
shots of the model carriage rolling down the basin, the film also shows
the hull model being constructed in the woodshop. Things have not
changed that much, except today they have more advanced programmable
milling machines. The last three minutes of this 10 minute feature are
about high-schoolers getting shop credit by working as aids in a
California Lockheed plant assembling P-38 Lightnings.
https://www.youtube.com/
5) This video seems to be from the owner of some sort of private ship
consulting company (Datawave Marine Solutions) who also likes to
do YouTube shorts on various ship construction issues, presumably
to attract customers. But it gives a quick overview of what's done
in a model basin (it's not DTMB though - there are numerous other
basins at universities, private companies, and other counties'
facilities throughout the world). It's 12 minutes long.
For straight information and pictures one can go to the Wiki Page for
for DTMB:
https://en.wikipedia.org/
For those who want to dig deeper into the mathematical scaling laws
used by model basins here are two Wikipages on William Froude and
his work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/
One can also download a PDF of the Froude's 1888 classic
"The Resistance of Ships":
https://archive.org/details/
I also stumbled across a Scientific American article from December
1907[!] by a certain D. W. Taylor, Naval Constructor on what a model basin
does. But the skinflints wanted $8 for the complete PDF and I didn't
feel like biting. Note that he is describing the *original* US ship model
basin built in 1899 on the grounds of what in now the Navy Yard on the
Anacostia River in south-east DC. The much larger DTMB was completed at
Carderock in 1939 on the eve of WWII.
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