Few symbols of naval power are as awe-inspiring as modern aircraft carriers.
The USS Gerald R. Ford, the newest supercarrier in the United States Navy, embodies the culmination of naval engineering.
The ship is over 1,000 feet in length and stands at 250 feet above the water, defying preliminary notions of instability.
Their design may seem precarious to the naked eye. All that narrow knife-like hull and that massive superstructure centered on one side of the flight deck do not seem like a way to make it to port in rough seas.
But centuries of naval architecture have led up to these ships, which are among the most stable oceangoing platforms.
There is a marriage of design principles involved in aircraft carriers to achieve that remarkable buoyancy.
Steel deck plating and similar construction with hollow spaces in the vessel notwithstanding, a carrier is less dense than water because of all these empty spaces. Thus it floats.
The buoyancy center middle point in the plane view of a ship is located a little higher than the center of gravity-a little forward but more importantly, a little higher hence allowing the vessel to self-right in case it tips.
This means that, as the bearer rises, the center of gravity is lifted with it, thereby requiring greater force to overturn, hence making the effort of the ship much more to right itself.
As one would expect of a ship, observers might note that the hull of the carrier is narrowed at the waterline to minimize drag.
When one looks at the bottom of the hull, however, it widens into a flat bottom, creating stable ground for running into the turbulent water.
Thus, the design of these vessels ensures stability even in the most turbulent of waters. The most unique feature of aircraft carriers is the island superstructure found on the starboard side of the flight deck.
This would prove to be important conning for the ship and the direction of flight deck operations. The offsetting of the superstructure to one side was first experimented with in 1917; therefore, it left the entire flight deck open for aircraft use.
The superstructure is stabilized through the design of a wider flight deck on the other side of the balancing mass. Ironically, the superstructure is almost always mounted on the starboard side. Aircraft propellers are generally designed to rotate left as seen from the cockpit.
A spin to the left tends to exert a yaw in that direction. When an aircraft goes out of control, the yaw tends to pull the aircraft away from the superstructure, making it safer to take off and land.
The modern aircraft carrier certainly is one of the wonders of engineering, challenging an initial impression of instability. And indeed, in the design principle-from buoyancy and placement of superstructure-they leave them among the most stable ships in any navy.