The Ark - materials, construction and seaworthness

Think of this thing 'bobbing' up and down on the water. Then imagine the sheer amount of power available to drive machinery. The skill and intelligence it would take to build such a thing renders such sub-technology childs play.I'm toying with the idea of a simple self-siphoning pump based on the up and down movement of the ark. But there are any other number of ways to achieve the same thing. Once one has 'limitless' power to drive things.

Yeah maybe a bit too complex. The old reciprocating pump will have to suffice using plain up and down action of the ark. Tried and trusted and easy to manufacture

You don't mean: explain how to convert the up and down action of the ark relative to the surface of the water into a pump do you?

Pitching (front-to-back) and rolling (side-to-side). Both provide the up and down motion (perpendicularily) relative to the surface of the water needed to drive a pump.

I, like Noah, have no idea. Neither do I need to. All I need to observe is that boats roll relative to the surface of the water. Or I could note that waves cause vessels to rise and fall as they pass underneath themI could use either phenomenon in my design:1. a flat sheet submerged (horizontally) in the water which would translate the rolling action into my pump. The sheet would tend to resist the rolling action2. a float which rises and falls due to actions of peaks and troughs in water levels relative to the side of the ark - whilst the larger ark raises and lowers not.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Who said anything about a perpetual motion pump?

Say we pick the sheet pump (now, now Ringo...)A disc of say 2 metres (whatever that is in cubits) diameter is submerged (horizontally) in the water off one side of the ark. To the centre of that disc and rising vertically, we attach a nice straight tree trunk which comes up out of the water parellel with the side of our ark. This tree truck attachs at the top (via pivot) to a horizontally mounted roughly hewn beam of wood which protrudes out of side of the ark. This beam is actually a see saw - its middle being fixed to a pivot in the side wall of the ark.For completeness sake we affix an 'eye' to the side of the ark, through which the tree trunk passes, half way between the beam and the discRoll the ark back and foward. The resistance of the disc to movement through the water will cause the beam to see-saw - the end on the inside rising up and down. A float would achieve the same thingAttach this end to the pumpCommence pumping.It works!No shit - literally!Edited by iano, : change perpendicular to parellelEdited by iano, : No reason given.

I remember reading a popularized book on that subject a few years back. "Longtitude" or something it was called.Fascinating stuff

I don't need references. I've just provided a perfectly acceptable working design for pump actuation. Perhaps I was too hasty in stating the pump works but supposed that Discreet Label (to whom I was responding) is smart enough to get the restBut if you want me to explain how a piston pump works then I will.

Perhaps you could. But lets restrict it to the supporting this notion you have as to requirements for science fora. Hint: it ain't rule 4.I've given you a reasoned argument. Reasoned argument against (the reasoning) would be welcome.

I'd pick side rolling myself. There would be more side to side movement than front to back pitching I imagine - given the arks rectangular dimension. Noah being the age he wa, had probably seen the destrutive forces of nature before. A good place to position the pump drive apparatus would not be 'outside' the ark - where wind and wave load can load its elegant structure. I say 'outside'. There is nothing to design the side plain of the boat to be somewhat castellated - and then sheet the castellations off in order to provide pockets behind the sheeting which are open to the ocean below - no wind, no waves, or currents just a still body of water that swells and decays according to the rolling of the ark or larger, slower swells in the main body of water. In these 'pockets' one postions the far more delicate apparatusThis to avoid the need for heavily reinforced structures Little or none due to that described above Welding (only kidding) There being more or less only vertical movement of our tree trunk, attachment isn't a big issue. A good joint always does the trick (the wooden variety I mean) Biblically we are in the dark. There could have been a thermonuclear reactor on board for all we know but we are working on the basis of the technology that can build relatively simple structures. A 2 metre (for the sake of discussion) diameter disc would shift some poo but it would have a hard time forcing a piston to punch a hole through the bottom of a suitably supported pump housing The poo is in the bottom of the ark (this according to the maxim: poo runs downhill). There we will find our pump. the disc is in the water below the water line - there's not a whole lot to it really. You can place pumps on both sides of the boat if you like to balance it. In fact I would have a bank of 20 on each side. Small and many rather that big and heavy. Better for reliablity(no matter how well designed - stuff always breaks down in my experience) No more than a two metre diameter disc can apply. Another sizing issue to be dealt with in Noah tent. This item could be quite light in fact. Seeing as the action has been reduced to merely vertical loads we can make it quite slender in the width and big on depth. Not that inertia is a big problem given the slow period of the arks rolling (which gives me an idea about these castellations we have our disc placed in (think pistons there too!) Probably because they haven't got this poo issue to resolve Huh? I haven't said anything about cylinder and piston. That is the pump. This is only the action which drives the pump. At the moment I have a working see-saw. Pistons, cylinders and one-way valves are for later (should you persevere in your unbelief)Edited by iano, : No reason given.

I'm giving you global principles. If you can say what the wind load and pump rates are and what the compressive strength of gopher tree trunks are I can get more specific. General experience in practical engineering raises no significant problems yet. But I welcome your rigor Put it this way, I wouldn't like to be reincarnated as one See In-Ark Pump Activation Chambers^tm described above dealt with in the above In responding I would ask some latitude in retaining a right to reply to criticims of the design. I figured it out on the 40 min ride home. Noah had somewhat longerRight, we have a see-saw action somewhere above the water line. I'm (in my minds eye, where engineers are prone to wander) standing on the bottom of the ark looking up at it working. I hang a weight from it. 1 slave. It keeps working. 2 slaves. No problem. 3, then 4, the 5.... At 15 slaves it starts to wilt and my foreman reports back that whilst every thing is fine with the mechanism so far he did see some flexing in the tree trunk connecting rod and suggests another eye or two down the 'outside' to rectify things. So I decide to remove 1 slave to compensate for the friction associated with the extra eyes and some downstream losses and. This pump is going to replicated 40 times (which includes a factor of safety of 2) so I build in only notional factor of safety at this point.Do you really want to find out about pumps. Its quite easy (I figure square pistons instead of round). If you would only believe it would be so much easier... I'd give my right arm if you could. Left as well at a push. Left and right legs You'd discover what I know. God You'd be too mind boggled to be worrying about knowing me. All your attention would be on him.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

The relative motion betwixt water and a fixed point on the hull is a function of the amount of roll the ark undergoes. DL was talking about a different thing altogether. Given the arks breadth even 1 degree of roll would provide sufficient stroke for Noahs pump The period of roll involved with the ark would be slooooooooow. Who knows a minute to lean to the lef...I mean port and a minute to get back to centre. This is not a cork we are talking about here - nor a timepiece. In fact given the long period I would probably shift to a float operation - but that is just a detail in design Which ship ever had this volume of poo to shift. A normal bilge pump has to pump water which is a different matter altogether than semi-solid sludge. Design for function is the name of the game.

Rolling of ships is significant factor in their design. The ark is as subject to those forces as any other. It wasn't that wide by the standards of today ( the widest ship today is 3 times wider that the ark - given the common estimates for the ark listed)226 ft is the width of the Jarhe Viking - the biggest ship ever built. The wavelength of sea-going waves is, I suggest, far, far less

Which is more important: on-topic or a smileI'd go for a smile anytime