Alabama TEM explorers is made possible by the generous support of the Holle Family Foundation, established to honor the legacy of Brigadier General Everett Holle and his parents, Evelyn and Fred.

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Engineering, math.

All coming up right now on Alabama STEM Explorers.

Hi, welcome to Alabama STEM Explorers.

I'm Mitch and I'm here today at Austal, USA in Mobile, Alabama, with Anton.

I see some awesome chefs behind here.

Please tell me about them.

Sure.

Okay.

So over to, I guess, my left, we've got the littoral combat ship or LCS.

Austal has been building that since 2005.

This is LC has number 34, which is our 17th LCS and that will get delivered to the Navy here shortly.

The other one over here right behind me is the EPF 13 and that is a an intra theater transport catamaran and that is the 13th one of those obviously.

And we will deliver that to the Navy here shortly as well.

So they're both almost ready to go.

So what exactly does Austal USA do?

So we are a full service shipbuilder, which means that we go right through from design to production.

We actually build the ships that you see here.

We take them out, we trial them, make sure they're good before we hand them over to the Navy and then we after delivery, we actually support them when they're in service.

So we've got a full ship repair team that goes all around the world that's really cool.

So like how long it takes a long time to build one of these ships, I would assume.

Yeah.

So the LCS behind us takes about 36 months.

The EPF is about 20 to 24 at the moment and that's from the very start of cutting flight.

We cut out, you know, flat plate into into shapes and start forming it into ship shapes.

And then basically the end of that period is delivery to the Navy.

That's crazy.

That's cool.

So like, tell me about some of the science.

Sure.

So I thought today we might be able to talk about, you know, what makes ships float, right?

Yeah.

And really, obviously, they sit in water, water support them.

They're so big.

How do they feel?

They are, right.

So the LCS back there is 3000 tons.

That's crazy.

And you wouldn't expect something like that to be able to float.

But I guess if you if you go right back in history, the principle of buoyancy, which is what supports a ship, was actually really not discovered but first enunciated by Archimedes in the Archimedes principle that yeah.

So basically it's says that the, the weight of a ship or something floating in water is equal to the weight of the water that it displaces when it goes in the water.

So when we, when we put these ships in, obviously they displace water and push it all out the way and then they get to a point where they float on an even keel.

Yeah.

So when you say displace, what exactly do you mean?

So what we could we could demonstrate, right?

So it the legend goes that Archimedes was trying to work out the weight of a golden crown without actually melting it down into a into a volume that they could measure.

And he noticed when he got in his bathtub that the water rose.

So as he got in, he was pushing the water out of the way where his body went.

And so I thought we'd demonstrate my kids wouldn't let me ruin one of their dolls in the water today.

So we're using my water bottle as Archimedes.

And if you look, I've drawn on a water line, okay?

So that as Archimedes goes into the tub, you can see the water goes up, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's displacing water.

And if you if you do it, okay, you can actually feel that it pushes back at you.

Yeah, it does it.

Right.

So that's a, that's a force that's pushing that water bottle in this case.

Yeah.

And keeping it up and you can see now that it floats.

Yeah.

So that's the basic theory of displacement and also basically describes the buoyancy force that is acting on a ship's hull or anything else that's floating in the water and keeping it up and keeping it floating.

Yeah, that's crazy.

So tell me more.

Sure.

Yeah.

So I figured what we what we could do is talk a little bit about density, okay?

How that affects the buoyant forces that act.

So I'll grab some, some Play-Doh and if you want to put that in the water.

In the water.

Right.

sinks the bottom.

You sink straight away.

Right.

Yeah.

Now that same.

Okay, so we're not going to go to a different piece, okay?

Because I don't want to I don't want to make like there's any kind of trick or anything to this.

But if we form this into a shape of, say, a bowl or something like that, that can contain air.

Yeah.

Because the air in the middle.

Yeah, right.

There's air in the middle.

Eventually we'll get this to a point where it will float.

That's crazy.

Despite its weight.

But so the the the weight of the water that it displaces now is greater than the weight of this modeling clay.

A bit of a mess.

What we should say.

Wow, that's crazy.

Yeah.

So what exactly is it that makes the air that makes it float?

So it's it's the fact that the the amount of water that it is pushing out the way, as you put that in, is actually greater than its it's more than the actual weight of the Play-Doh.

Now that's crazy.

So like how do you take this principle and use it in like your ships?

So both of these ships behind us are made out of aluminum, and aluminum is actually heavier than that.

Clay, if we if we had a solid piece of aluminum and put it in there, it would sink straight to the bottom.

Yeah.

And most metals far heavier than water.

And because we form that metal into the shape of a of a ship's hull, you can see the hull is behind us, which is similar.

It looks different, obviously, than than the clay in here.

But because it is formed into a shape that contains a whole bunch of air instead of just solid metal, that's what actually gives it the ability to float.

Yeah, that's crazy.

So if you want.

Okay, I thought we'd go a little bit beyond that because this is this is very basic stuff, right?

Yeah.

This is you could you could almost do this in kindergarten.

Yeah.

So it's one thing to have a ship float, but what keeps it from just turning over upside down?

Yeah, that's tough.

I don't know.

Well, so we'll.

We'll introduce some basic principles of stability.

Okay.

For these ships behind me, a multi hulls.

So they're pretty complicated ships.

So now we know how they float.

Thought I'd move up to a to a slightly different boat here.

Okay.

And this is all just stuff that I've found in my office and hopefully it'll, it'll stay waterproof for long enough.

More, more clay again, just to give it some white oak.

And so it's just a regular cardboard box running through a couple of blocks with a bit of white in the bottom.

Now, this should float, I hope, and it's reasonably stable.

So if you if you push on the side of this, it returns to normal pretty.

Oh yeah.

That's that's really neat.

Yeah.

So this as I said, there's the buoyant forces pushing up from the water to push against the hull.

And then there's also the force of gravity that's acting on the mass of the ship to push it down into the water.

So it's like making a perfect legs stable.

So they are stable.

Yeah, exactly.

This is stability.

Yeah.

And what do you think happens if we raise that way up off the bottom there?

I bet I'm trying to think I bet what it sick or what it like it may not sink.

I think if you tilted it, would it go over.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

And and so what I did was I took another little lighter and just stuck some knives in it so that we could see a higher center of gravity.

Now, this might not tip all the way over, so it looks like it's going to, but it is very unstable, right?

Yeah.

You don't even have to touch that much.

You can.

Yeah, that's so that.

And the wind isn't helping either so the wind does not help on a day like today.

Yeah.

But because we've moved this mass from down low.

Yeah.

Where you can see that is force easily pushes back and keeps that ship upright.

Then a ship's going to sink slowly because it's filling, it's, it's cardboard.

But if we move that up higher off the bottom now the, the the center of this mass, the center of gravity of this is a lot higher than the center of buoyancy.

Yeah.

So as that tips over, it doesn't have the same kind of, you know, you said before the balancing out of the force of buoyancy in the force of gravity, it doesn't have that same balance that.

Yeah.

Because it's completely if, if we let it go we'll just watch it capsize.

Yeah.

Straight over.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's crazy.

So it's, it's those kind of basic things, even though it's a very simple idea, something you can do in a, in a tub of water here with some, some modeling clay.

It's those basic principles that keep these ships afloat when they're at sea.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Do you think there's any other ways that you could keep a ship upright?

Try to think like, I don't know.

Is there?

There are.

Okay, so I said, this is we simplified things and this is basically a single hull.

Yeah.

If you look back here, how many holes is that one have You can't see the other one.

So one, two, three on the other side.

Oh, okay.

And this one has two.

So by spreading that mass out, you get a lot more stable platform.

And that's what these two both do.

That's crazy.

That right.

Really, really smoothly on the sea.

Yeah.

So like I know like tell me about some like the stem that goes into this The Science Show.

There is there is a lot of all of those.

So obviously we talk about some of the science of warships float and how how they stay upright in the water.

And I just tip over.

But there is there is a lot of engineering that goes into the design of all the system.

So I like to tell people that a ship is like a floating city.

Okay?

It's not just your kayak or something where you get in, you paddle everything else.

They are engines to make that thing go.

There are fuel tanks to store the fuel in, fuel pumps to pump the fuel to the engine's whole piping systems devoted to that.

There's air conditioning in there to keep it stable temperature.

There's refrigeration units so that you can cool the electronics and also keep all of your food.

Good for the 30 days that these guys go out.

Yeah, somebody has to design all those systems.

So we have a whole bunch of mechanical engineers, we have a whole bunch of electrical engineers.

The ship has to generate its own power, basically, these ships have about enough power to power a small town.

Yeah, that's probably about 10,000 people.

So you've got to have people to run that.

You've got to have people just to design those systems and distribute the power through the ship and do some of the air and some of the oil and other systems within there.

So a lot of mechanical engineering, a lot of electrical engineering, you know, and all of it is is based on math, right?

Yeah.

So working out how fast you can pump the fluids through pipes and things like that, it's all math based, it's all flow equations and things like that.

Naval architecture is is a lot of math.

We talked about stability in it's very basic form, but to actually work out the stability when you have a compartment flooded or something like that, there's there's a whole bunch of math behind that.

Nowadays, we have computers to do it for us, which is good.

But back in the day, you had to write out laws, calculations by hand, and it was just pages and pages and pages of it.

So a lot of math behind everything, but a lot of engineering work.

So yeah, yeah.

I said mechanical, electrical engineers.

We have structural engineers to make sure that the ship structures are suitable for encountering seas and big waves and things light up.

And then we have truly, really artists who design some of the interior work on the ships, the Navy ships, so they don't look like much from the outside.

But inside, you know, if you've got living quarters for the crew, you know, they have to have lounge rooms, they have to have gyms and things like that.

So we've got people who design all those things and lay it out right through to, you know, all the people who support the building of the ship itself.

There's a whole bunch of other, you know, technologies and things that we used to just make the business work.

So a lot of a lot of technology involved there.

Yeah.

So what are like those three major things, three major types of engineers that you have.

Yep.

What are the like the main differences between those three.

Sure.

You know, so electrical engineers working out electrical systems and distribution of power, it's all about the flow of electrons and things like that.

You learn a little bit about that in Naval Architecture School where I went, but I wouldn't try and design an entire electrical system of a ship.

So you have people who specialize just in that.

Mechanical engineers.

Not only do they look at things like, you know, moving systems and, you know, how things like diesel engines operate, but also, you know, how fluids move through pipes and all sorts of other things that I would also I wouldn't try and do.

So you do need people who specialize in electrical engineering.

You do need people who specialize in mechanical.

And obviously, you need people who can make a ship slice through the water and go fast, which is a design for.

Yeah.

So I assume you can be like super creative with like building these ships.

Absolutely.

So I mean, in its very basic form, if you think about it, when we started, this was just an idea on paper or on a computer and somebody had to design all of the lines and get everything to work correctly together.

You know, with the three hulls and the way the hulls come up out of the water, somebody has got to work out how all that stuff sort of goes together.

And there was a lot of creativity involved in setting all those surfaces to the right angles and and getting things to look at.

The end of the day, not too bad.

Yeah.

So like what are the different type of ships you make?

We produce traditionally, I guess several years ago we produced basically just these high speed aluminum, multi hulls.

And just within the last two years we've basically modified our shipyard behind us there to include so that we could build more traditional steel ships.

And so we were taking on projects as diverse as a floating drydock, which almost looks like this cardboard box right.

Just a very simple structure, but floats and floods so that you can launch ships within it.

Yeah.

So, like, what are some of the major differences between like having a aluminum ship and having a steel ship write it?

At the end of the day, it's it's just a metal.

So, you know, in terms of strength and everything else, they have different properties, but they respond in very similar ways, really.

We build or we built these ships in aluminum so that we could make them lightweight and and therefore we could actually go faster.

But if you just building a standard cargo ship or something like that, you might build a more conventional steel structure.

And it would inside it would look the structures fairly similar, but just built for a different purpose.

And so just to expand on talking about some of the types of ships we build, we've just taken on a contract to build the Coast Guard's offshore patrol cutter.

Wow.

So that's a new big steel ship that we'll be building here in the next 12 months through to the Navy's towing and salvage tug boats, which almost looks like an offshore vessel that you'll see out here in the Gulf of Mexico.

Yeah.

So, like, once you have these ships and then you need to, like, get them out to sea, you like to give them to, like the Navy and then how do how does the how do you like, transport them all the way out there?

Yeah.

So we build actually on the keel stands over here so that we can drive transporters in underneath them.

And the transporter is basically a self-propelled trailer that we use to pick up the ship.

There's a whole series of those underneath the ship to pick it up.

They pick the ship up and simply drive out onto a launch barge.

And then we take the launch barge down the river to our floating drydock, put the ship in there, flood the drydock, the ship floats off and we can bring it back up here to finish outfitting.

Yeah, that's neat.

So what are some of like the your favorite or like the weirdest ships you've built?

Uh, I probably can't talk about the weirdest one, but some of my favorites in Australia.

I worked on a lot of high speed ferries and they always had interesting clients and we were always doing novel things.

So LCS is a is a trimaran and it was the first trimaran surface combatant.

So that's always got a special place in my heart.

Yeah, I was a project naval architect on that one, but before I did that, I built the world's largest trimaran vehicle, passenger ferry, and nobody had ever tried to do that in the past.

So it's just all the new things that you get to work on and really, you know, also get to play with new technologies and things like that.

So we're always bringing in new computer systems.

We now design these ships in 3D modeling software so that every piece part of that ship is identified and actually modeled.

And you can you can virtually walk through the ship and see how it's going to look before you ever actually start cutting plates.

And so that's really cool to be able to play with things like that and, and, you know, use those computer systems to really help you out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So like other than the like engineers, what are some of like the other jobs that you can that people can have here?

Oh, there's a whole range.

So I mean, obviously for for ship production, we need a lot of welders and fitters.

We need a lot of pipe welders and fitters.

We need electricians who can actually install cables and install electrical systems.

There are people who build some of the furniture and things that go inside the ships.

So we call that outfit.

And there are there are people who work just building those kinds of things, bunks and tables and desks and you name it.

There are people who just drive out cranes on the lift and make sure that we're doing things like that safely right through to obviously we need accountants.

We need people who are good at managing all of these complex projects, people who can plan and develop the schedules.

So that we do all of this on time because we pride ourselves on our on time delivery.

And so we need people who can who can plan all of that work and make sure that it flows through our shipyard in the right order so that we're building the right parts so that we can put it all together and build the final ship there.

Yeah, there's also, you know, obviously a bunch of people who are who are good at managing other people.

There is a human resources department to supply more people and ensure that we're trained and everything else as well.

Yeah.

So like you said, what would you tell someone that like wanted to like a, like a kid that wanted to like build boats when they should.

So there's, there's something for everyone in a shipyard, whether you want to go straight into vocational work and, you know, trying to be a welder or a fitter or something like that.

There's lots of good training programs.

Hospital has a fantastic training program to build a workforce of welders and fitters and electricians and everyone else.

But then, you know, if you are the kind of person who wants to go to college, you know, I went to the maritime college studying naval architecture.

It's a lot of math, a lot of science.

So take every math and science course that you can, you know, and if there's engineering courses and things available, obviously take those and just get get yourself a good grounding in a lot of sort of engineering disciplines and things like that.

But there are there are, as I said, many disciplines within the shipyard.

So like how have ships changed over the years from like ten years ago, 20 years ago?

Yeah.

So we're always trying to make them more efficient because no operator wants to pay more to operate a ship than they did for their last one.

We are also in improving a lot just in terms of our machinery, automation and things like that.

So in the mid-nineties, Austal went and developed a very advanced machinery control system that means big ships like this, you can operate all of the engineering systems, so engines and pumps and fans and everything else from just a single seat on the bridge, which is the command center of the ship.

But now as we go forward, we're getting into automated and unmanned ships.

So APF 13 behind me is actually the largest unmanned ship in the Navy's inventory.

And we can operate that without any people basically controlling the system.

How does that work?

So it's a it's basically a very advanced computer control system that really just operates the engines.

You know, I said we have a machinery control system that means just one person can operate all of the machinery.

We basically did computer programing and a layer on top of that machinery control system to take that person out of the loop.

So now if an engine has an over temperature alarm or something like that, the computer can respond to that, bring that engine down and bring it offline and maybe use one of the other engines.

So it's just computer programing and a little bit of artificial intelligence to actually drive a system just like a human operator would.

Yeah.

So like how many of these, like, huge factories are like all over the world?

There's a number within the US there's, there's probably five or six large shipyards like Austal USA and some bigger ones obviously to build very big ships.

But around the world, you know, there's, there's shipbuilding hubs in Korea and Germany and China that produce a lot of the sort of the big cargo ships and things like that for the rest of the world.

And then you tend to you get every every country likes to have at least a couple of shipyards of their own so they can control the production of those ships for the country.

Yeah.

So like how did you get into boat building?

I've always loved the water.

So when I was actually probably starting Younger Than You Are, I would like to just go down to two piers and harbors and things like this and just look at boats.

And my family's always had boats.

And so it was a fairly natural extension to to look at designing ships.

Yeah, I get to mess around with boats like this and others every day at work.

I like a boat, like the one behind me.

Is this like us on the smaller side or the bigger side or.

Yeah, it's certainly out of all of the ship types in the world.

It's certainly on the smaller end.

So this one is 340 foot long.

She weighs about two and a half thousand tons which is really very small for a for a fairly large ship.

You can get some big oil tankers and things like that that are over a thousand feet long and 100,000 tons, you know, so so these are small, lightweight, high speed can get in and out of shallow ports and things like that.

Well, thank you so much for this has been such a cool experience.

I'll never see ships the same way because this is so amazing, this awesome place.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Any time.

We we we love to introduce people to shipbuilding and what we do here and how you come back.

We might be able to put you on the tools.

One, two.

Yeah, well, I'll see you next week for another episode of Alabama STEM explores thanks for watching Alabama STEM Explorers.

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Alabama STEM Explorers is made possible by the generous support of the Holle Family Foundation, established to honor the legacy of Brigadier General Everett Holle and his parents, Evelyn and Fred Holle.

Champions of Servant Leadership.