On Scaling Laws and Maritime Transport

Abstract

Scaling, as a manifestation of the underlying general dynamics and geometry, is familiar throughout physics. It has helped scientists gain deeper insights into problems ranging across the entire spectrum of science and technology, as scaling laws typically reflect generic features and physical principles that are independent of the detailed dynamics or specific characteristics of particular models. Fluid mechanics and phase transitions are significant examples of physics in which scaling has illuminated important universal principles or structures, and has provided responses to practical problems. Also, complex systems as living organisms obey some scaling relations that capture these systems’ essential features, if these do in fact exist. In contrast to the large diversity and complexity of living organisms, one finds the simplicity of the scaling behaviour of biological processes that holds true in a wide range of phenomena and a large range of energy and mass.The constructal theory states that flow systems evolve in time so that they develop the flow architecture that maximizes flow access under the constraints posed to the flow.
This “extreme” principle has been quite successful in justifying allometric scaling laws, global circulation and climate characteristics, and even scaling effects in running, swimming and flying. Some of these moving relationships, the scaling between mass and speed, are tested in relation to ships and maritime transport, in which it is possible to find a reasonable continuity with the types of scales seen in living moving organisms, and some preliminary conclusions are drawn, pointing to the convenience but also to the difficulties of using large ships.