EXPERTS: Student team Dingo (Joseph Carraway, Samuel Fuchs, Caleb Irvin, Kristina Satullo, Joseph Van Houten) has been awarded the Ackles Design Prize in their NA 475 Senior Capstone Course for their design of a high-speed military insertion vessel. Dingo is a stealth marine insertion vessel. It has dimensions small enough to fit into the cargo…
Student team Dingo (Joseph Carraway, Samuel Fuchs, Caleb Irvin, Kristina Satullo, Joseph Van Houten) has been awarded the Ackles Design Prize in their NA 475 Senior Capstone Course for their design of a high-speed military insertion vessel.
Dingo is a stealth marine insertion vessel. It has dimensions small enough to fit into the cargo bay of a C-5 Galaxy Plane. The vessel’s main purpose is to transport a crew of up to 10 military personnel to a location, drop them off in an assortment of different military vessels capable of fitting in the garage in the back, and then submerging the vessel up to a meter in the water with ballast tanks in the bow and aft as the garage doubles as a ballast tank once they are dropped off. Upon the crew’s return, 2 operators remaining on board will resurface the vessel and load them back on board. All the while, the vessel is fitted with two General Electric LM-500 gas turbine engines and surface-piercing propellers that allow it to reach speeds up to 60 kts.
“It was a very strong year in NA 475,” explains Associate Professor Matthew Collette, “However, the Dingo vessel design was ranked the highest by both the advisory board and by their final report score. The design required a lot of non-standard analysis including surface propellers, fuel consumption calculation, Powersea, etc.”
The senior capstone course allows for small student teams to create, develop, and document original marine designs to contract design level and involves extensive project planning and weekly progress reporting. The course culminates in the oral presentation of the project to both faculty and marine industry experts.
Other designs included a replacement national park ferry, and both research and military-focused icebreaker vessels.
Nicole Frawley-Panyard
Marketing & Communications Specialist
