Introductory Address 



Captain Myron V. Ricketts, USN 



Commander, David W. Taylor 



Naval Ship Research and Development Center 



We at the David W. Taylor Naval Ship Research 

 and Development Center are both pleased and proud 

 to join with the Office of Naval Research and the 

 National Academy of Sciences in sponsoring the 

 Twelfth Symposiumon Naval Hydrodynamics. While 

 not a sponsor of the four earlier symposia held in 

 Washington, the Center was directly and indirectly 

 involved with all of the previous meetings. Of the 

 forty-one papers to be presented at the present 

 Symposium, five are authored by Center researchers, 

 roughly the same number of papers given by Center 

 authors at earlier symposia. In addition, much of 

 the other U.S. research to be presented in papers 

 to this Symposium was supported by the U.S. Navy's 

 General Hydrodynamics Research Program which the 

 Center has administered for nearly thirty years. 



It is worthy to note that this year's confer- 

 ence is directed mainly at the underlying physics 

 of hydrodynamic processes. The papers are of quite 

 a fundamental nature , perhaps more so than was true 

 of many of the earlier symposia. The Symposiiom 

 topics are of immense importance to both the mer- 

 chant ship and naval communities : Boundary Layer 

 Stability and Transition because of their relation- 

 ship to vehicle drag, cavitation inception, and 

 flow noise; Ship Boundary Layers and Propeller/ 

 Hull Interaction because a need to accurately pre- 

 dict vehicle drag, propulsive efficiency, and 

 vibration; Cavitation, a very major cause of ero- 



sion, vibration, and noise; and finally. Geo- 

 physical Fluid Dynamics which describes the envi- 

 ronment in which ocean systems must operate. Each 

 topic area is a subject of current and lively in- 

 terest and has witnessed remarkable advances over 

 the past few years. 



The very high quality of the research papers 

 to be presented this week is typical of previous 

 Naval Hydrodynamics Symposia and has earned for the 

 series the reputation of being the preeminent inter- 

 national conferences on ship hydrodynamics. Each 

 symposium has constituted an exceedingly valuable 

 open forum which promotes national and international 

 ties and dialogues between researchers in the field 

 of hydrodynamics. 



I would like to close by saying that my 

 Center's namesake, Admiral David W. Taylor, the U.S. 

 pioneer hydrodynamic is t and foremost naval archi- 

 tect, introducer to the U.S. of towing tanks, water 

 tunnels, transformer of empiricism to scientific 

 methods , would be very pleased to be associated 

 with the Twelfth Symposium on Naval Hydrodynamics. 

 On Wednesday we look forward to welcoming you on a 

 tour of the hydrodynamic facilities at the Center. 

 You will see work in progress at our rotating arm 

 facility, seakeeping basin, towing tanks and turn- 

 ing basin, and at our largest cavitation tionnel. 

 Best wishes for a very successful conference. 



