There have been a few small boats which have been built that run off of the waves of the ocean, they collect energy from the waves, and use that to turn the propeller. Of course, making forward progress is difficult if they are going into the waves because the waves are pushing in the other direction, and it is hard to convert that energy in enough percentage to propel them forward. Nevertheless, they can work with a waves from the rear, that is if the vessel doesn't go faster than the approaching waves from the rear, or the boat could use side currents converting enough energy to move the propeller to propel the boat.
The designers of these things use rather interesting techniques, and their devices often allow the waves coming between a catamaran to push floats up and down, this in turn is connected to a crankshaft and gears to the propeller shaft. That's an interesting strategy right? Sure it is, but I have a different idea, I'd like to build something really large, perhaps something the size of a giant oil tanker, but made with carbon nanotube construction, so it's much lighter than steel, and much more buoyant.
Next, rather than floats which are designed very similar to ocean wave generation machines to power up local coastlines as alternative energy features, it seems it might be more appropriate to have suction cup shaped holes in the bottom of a flat hulled boat, as the wave when underneath the boat would automatically put more dynamic pressure up against the air which was trapped in the convex or cone shaped space underneath. This would cause the air pressure to push up on a piston. Once released more air could fill that cavity, while also helping with the buoyancy.
Then, you could have many crankshafts along these pistons set to the length of the waves to power up the propellers. Perhaps you could disengage some of the cone shaped orifices based on the length of the waves, so you didn't have any of the pistons fighting each other. Is this a feasible design? We don't know, because no one has ever built it, and there are no CADCAM mathematical algorithms to prove that it would work or not. About the only thing we can do now is build one, and see if it works.
If it is not enough to power up a large-scale ship, even one which is more buoyant and light weight, perhaps it could propel a smaller craft like an amphibious unmanned vehicle for marine research, or military applications. Perhaps we should be thinking here, and some PhD robotics candidate student working on AUV's might build and engineer one. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.
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