From: "Nick Schade" <schade_at_guillemot-kayaks.com> > Unfortunately, this system does not strike everyone as scientific > enough. The grad student (Sam Mcfadden) wants to put some strain > gages on a boat and go paddling. I think we might learn something > interesting. Will he learn how strong is "strong enough". At best, > only what is strong enough for the conditions he paddled in. But that > might be interesting. He will also see where the stresses are in the > boat. And we might be able to draw conclusion about other conditions > by extension. When in university, studying structural engineering, I thought a lot about optimizing to the hilt. Then I learned that the structure in a building represents about 20% of the total cost. Saving 10% on the structure saves 2% on the building - less than the margin for cost overruns due to... Plus you expose yourself to extra lawsuits for adding risk. I gave up the idea. Optimizing a kayak is nothing compared to the several hundred pounds a fully loaded touring kayak weighs. Racers, of course, have other objectives. It's also interesting that some say "this kayak is weak - it flexes too much!" while others say "My skin-on-frame is flexible - that's why it's strong!" Mike. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Oct 12 2000 - 17:51:21 PDT
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