After some reading, it seems to me that boat design in the 60s and 70s was mostly trial and error (Blue thunder cats=error, etc.). Kind of like throwing poo against the wall and seeing what sticks.
To my untrained eye, most bottoms look alot alike.
How much actual hydrodynamic study and deep engineering actually go into bottom designs these days? Is it still a lot of trial and error or do people do modeling and simulations in their R&D work.

CTA

PS I'm just asking b/c I don't know. Not trying to ruffle the feathers of any builders.

depends on the shop. I know builders that just do what looks right and make it right after its built. There are also builders that spend tons of time getting everything perfect trying to find the best handleing most efficient, fastest hull out of their contraints. A lot of builders are doing scale tank testing, some doing wind tunnel testing. Stevens has a large tank testing facility and a phd program in ocean engineering i'd like to take someday which focuses on hydrodynamics as well as others.
http://gradschool.stevens-tech.edu/p...s/index.html#2

when i worked at viking, they did tank testing on the new 74 at stevens. Cabo also does their testing there. For some cool pics check out
http://www.wallypower.com/ pics 37 and 38 under power 118

a link to their towing tank
http://www.stevens.edu/engineering/c...ties/tank.html