These are the engineering studies behind the design decisions in Project Sea Silent. Figures are planning estimates built from published component specifications and standard marine derating practice; they will be validated against measured data during the refit and sea trials, and each study will be updated with the measured results. Sponsors receive first access to measured data as it comes in.
The project is named for an acoustic claim, so the acoustic claim has to be measured rather than asserted. A series-hybrid drivetrain is quiet for structural reasons: there is no mechanical drive path from engine to shaft, the generators sit on isolation mounts inside acoustically insulated enclosures, and in battery mode the machinery source is not attenuated — it is absent.
That last condition is what makes this vessel unusual as an instrument. On a conventional boat, machinery noise and propeller noise arrive at a hydrophone together and are difficult to separate. Running on batteries alone removes the machinery source entirely, leaving essentially the propeller — so the propeller's acoustic contribution can be characterized on its own, on a real hull, under way. Because this is a conversion rather than a new build, the same hull can also be measured before the refit begins, in its original geared-diesel configuration. A baseline and a controlled set of post-conversion modes on one hull is a rarer data set than it sounds; most comparisons have to be made across different vessels.
Those measurements are being planned now, in Phase 1 rather than Phase 3, because the baseline cannot be recovered once the original drivetrain is removed. Results will be published here as measured — including any that fail to support the design.
First-principles sizing of the aft boat-deck solar array: realistic flat-mount marine yield per square foot, what that power covers, and what it honestly doesn't.
Why the series-hybrid architecture belongs on a 55-foot hull — the locomotive's torque story and the cruise ship's power-station story, scaled down. Currently published as part of the sponsorship prospectus; web edition to follow.
A measured galvanic baseline of the acquired hull, design of the isolated DC distribution and shore-power isolation architecture, and a continuous leakage and reference-cell monitoring plan.
A measured baseline of the vessel as purchased, in its original geared-diesel configuration, then the same measurements repeated after conversion in battery-only, single-generator and dual-generator modes at matched speeds — isolating what the drivetrain, the enclosures and the propeller each contribute.
Further studies published as they are completed.