The story of KINGTOUGH
is a story full of fighting for dream and daring to turn the world.
Since establishment of our company, we set it our dream to offer to our clients high performance specialized boat solutions that can be relied on.
This seemingly very small and simple dream was later found a dream that is hugely big enough, too big that even more than half a century’s efforts and contributions by countless talents still feel helpless, which however is one that is finally tackled by KINGTOUGH. Thus, our story is actually also a story about how a company is thinking and acting to turn its industrial role from being one of the many to the irreplaceable one that can resolve the most striking world-class problems of the industry by ending a time when all of today’s high performance specialized boats that need to be deployed for tough missions in rough and complicated sea conditions are fated to be inherently troubled by serious hull slamming, pitching, rolling, heaving, rocking and fly-out at high speed in waves, strong transom-throwing, side skidding and sharp heeling at high speed maneuvering even only in flat water and bow steer at low speed in waves that have been troubling the industry for more than half a centuries with crew injuries.
Initially, our justification for a boat to be a good boat is also the way the industry takes for justification---If the boat can satisfy project-specified requirements and the safety requirements by survey rules, it can be regarded as a good boat. Above all such, the key is, if a boat can satisfy the project-specified performance and the stability required by survey rules, it then can be regarded as a good boat, because, the remaining requirements, no matter by project specifications or by survey rules, are nothing difficult to satisfy. It is due to such that, a good design company is one that can prove the qualification of its designs by satisfying these two standards from flat water tests after the designs have been turned to physical boats; based on same logic, a good manufacturer is one that can prove the qualification of its boats by same standards from test. In order to satisfy these two standards, KINGTOUGH did as many shipbuilders are doing today by working with third reputed design partners to deliver project specification qualified and survey rules satisfied boats.
After we got deeper into the industry with more knowledge and experience about the real situation of the industry, we found that there were many problems raised by clients on the boats which are identical problems that are far beyond the reach of any of today’s design technologies or survey rules, regardless of who the designer or builder is, and, regardless of the differences in hull dimensions, project-specific functionalities, equipment, propulsion, styling, structural material or any others that can be listed. Particularly for problems like crew injuries and electronics breakdowns due to serious hull slamming, pitching, rolling, heaving, rocking, inherent fly-out, heavy landings at high speed onto waves at high speed in waves, bow steer at low speed in waves, and sharp heeling, strong transom-throwing and terrible side skidding at high speed maneuvering even in flat water, they are 100% found in every of today’s high performance boats used by navies, rescue centers, coast guards and security companies well recorded by ISO with the numbers of crew injuries and electronic/structural breakdowns to be kept increasing every year due to increasing demand for higher speed operations in tougher conditions.
KINGTOUGH did not want such problems to be found in our boats.
We tried to talk with our co-operating design partners and even new design partners hoping there will be no such problems to behave in our boats, however, the answer is always “Such boats are behaving just like this!” It seemed such very problematic behaviors have turned to be a very basic fact and just there, forcing many designers to accept them and live with them, no matter they are willing to or not.
We never stopped our efforts and trying.
We then tried to talk with our existing design partners and even every possible industry-recognized innovative designers about the behaviors problems of today's boats, the design we wants and the flaws in their designs that we would hope to remove following our perspective based on the understanding in scientific working logic, but we found such designers have very big bias inherently and felt it is ridiculous for a shipyard to challenge their design logic, thus our advises were directly rejected. Lucky enough that we never stopped trying and directly taking the advantage of our role as shipyard to directly practice such ways of basic detail setting following the ways we feel the basic architectural platform shall be set to. Such perspectives in scientific working logic were finally turned out to be very advanced technologies and have been blended into the very initial version of our exclusive K-TOUGH Hull Platform.
Having seeing all such, we strongly more and more confident to take our own way and felt that we must change even more fundamentally in order to also be able to change the industry, otherwise the situation of endless suffering would be made to continue no matter how strong the call from clients is and how long time the call from clients have been there. But, how to change? This is the real challenging problem.
The first idea that came to our mind is, we may need to review our cognition in standards which made us to realize that, the criteria for satisfying project-specified performance and satisfying stability required by survey rules is actually only the lowest criteria which is far from being satisfactory for the demands by real-life missions. It is only because many designers and builders are doing very bad that the very few who can pass this basic cut-off line are regarded as the very superior ones, which actually is same situation with nearly every field of industry. This also reminded us that, maybe the many so-called standard answers for the justification of whether something is good actually have fundamental problems from the very basics in cognition. The problems behind such standard answers are difficult to be discovered and spotted out possibly due to the fact that nearly every one from same industry has learned to think and act as having been modeled by such standards and continue thinking and acting in such ways when they come to real-life problem studying and problem resolving, which has seriously ossified the mind to get thinking boldly impossible. We needed to explore more about it!
We then started to collect as much information on boat design technologies from all possible channels. Rather than simply following as standards for problem studying and problem resolving, we closely studied the basics that constituted each technology of authority and studied whether such basics in scientific working logic can seamlessly fit the demand of tough situational real-life mission conditions, with purpose to discover and truly understand what is the real fundamental in deciding the final coming of quality and capability of a high performance specialized boat.
With more and more efforts continuously invested, we got to realize that, in technology, there are fundamental technologies and engineering technologies. Fundamental technologies are about how to set the basic architectural platform following some logics as locked by the basic theory like the basic deep-V hull theory to allow project-specific applications to be adapted onto in order to form the basic solution model, while engineering technologies are about how to materialize the basic solution model into components for support of material purchase and construction through calculations and analysis.
The other facts that we found are:
1) More than 99% of today’s technologies actually are only engineering technologies which can be easily accessed from the public channel through survey rules and textbooks of naval architecture and marine engineering only as part of the public knowledge;
2) The design theories followed by the reputed design offices are also same design theories followed by shipyards' in-house designers, and, the software for performance prediction, stability calculation and any other calculations followed by the reputed design offices are also same software following by shipyards' in-house designers, meaning that, all are following same basic theories for their solution setting and using same tools for calculations and analysis;
3) Though boats designed by shipyard’s in-house designers and boats designed by third reputed design offices are behaving identically with no any significant difference, there however is a huge obstacle that has caused problems for designers from shipyards, which is, the test results of the physical boats designed by a third reputed design offices can practically be OK to satisfy both project-specified performance and stability criteria required by survey rules, however, even when the calculations and analysis have shown no problem, boats designed by designers from shipyards’ in-house design department can practically have problem by being unable to satisfy one or both standards when the boats have been put into physical test. And, this is just the reason to form the landscape of having basic solution model setting to be done by third reputed design offices and the job to engineer the solution model into production to be carried by shipyard’s in-house engineering departments. Particularly for the obstacle that stops shipyard’s in-house designers to design a boat that can satisfy both project performance and stability demand by survey rules, it actually was something puzzling us for some time because shipyards just could not figure out where the wrong was in the designs done by shipyards' in-house designers.
In order to get the discovered issue cleared up, we felt we needed to analyze things from the origins rather than simply following the tools for calculation and analysis, since the results from analysis and calculations always have some gap when compared with the tested results from the physical boats. This drove us to check the design philosophy of many sorts of design software that are widely used for engineering calculation and analysis and we then found the mystery that makes it happen---Solution models of same class actually are sharing same basic theory for logical setting which are locked inherently with same characteristics in performance and stability and can be predicted through the changes of parameters, however, due to the fact that the available mathematical models that being able to be calculated can not fully reflect the characteristics of the physical model of the original design, the physical model of the original design has to be imagined to have been simplified in order to match the characteristics of the mathematical model for being able to be calculated.
Due to such, inherently, there is gap between the characteristics of the solution model and the characteristics of the physical model that has been put for calculation. However, all boats have to be specified with performance and stability which are the two key elements in deciding its safety and efficiency, and, reputed designers are just those with big database from parameter settings and physical boat tests to enable the right justification on how to fill in this gap, rather than being equipped with more advanced technologies. This is why even shipyard’s designers can design boats that will have same characteristics in riding behaviors to the boats designed by such reputed designer’s hands.
As a matter of fact, this seemingly biggest obstacle for shipyards is something that can be easily resolved---If they want to do some statistics on hull particulars, weight, center of gravity, main engine, propulsion, speed, chine beam, deadrise angle distribution of the V-shaped bottom along the hull length from all the available high performance boats from the market, and with all such to form the basic database, even when they do not do any calculation, their prediction on stability and performance can be nearly 100% accurate in physical boats without any difficulty, which can even help understand characteristics of the hydrodynamics in hulls of different designs with variations in different bottom attachments to help understanding flaws of the designs by each designer. The real problem is, this is a very time-consuming, painstaking and costly process that nearly no any shipyards want to go through with, as a matter of fact, it is even a process that nearly no any third design offices want to take which is why such designers do not want to change their hull lines plan for improvement even when there have been big problems to occur on the behaviors of their designed boats (It is the simplest and easiest way to secure that their designs can fully satisfy physical test for both stability and performance which on the other hand will also curve their minds in the study of problems in riding behaviors that are raised from real life). Driven by it, the many innovations till today brought by the many industrial talents for high performance boat design technologies are more about refinements to some lines of the hull rather than fundamental change to the working principle of the classic deep-V hull theory, thus non of such innovations can bring fundamental change to the basic architectural platform setting, which results in no fundamental change to solution capabilities---Where there is no breakthrough in basic theory, there is no breakthrough in solution capabilities.
It is due to such that, the so-called reputed designers actually are not those who are capable to resolve problems of our time, rather, they are only those who can satisfy the lowest standards for safety and performance (We have seen many very reputed designers setting their hull lines terribly but this does not stop them from being reputed designers, because, all of their designs have no problem to satisfy project-specific requirements and survey rules).
This is also why the many world-class problems have been made to travel more than half a century of time to today to continue troubling our industry.
As such, one ridiculous phenomenon has been widely created and continued:
Many designers are modeling their solutions following the logical setting of the deep-V hull theory, declare that their boats can resolve the problems that are inherently locked by the flaws of the deep-V hull theory, and then allow their boats to repeat the problems locked by the deep-V hull theory.
This explains why many clients throughout navies, coast guards, rescue centers and security companies are always changing their suppliers in each purchase with feeling that they shall have selected the better supplier but quickly find they are just repeating the same game after they have received the boats and put in real-life use---Regardless of the differences in designer, builder, project-specific functionalities, equipment, propulsion, hull dimensions, design styling, coating, structural material, all boats classed as deep-V hull based boats are behaving identically terrible with identical problems like pitching, rolling, heaving, bow steer, side skidding, transom throwing, sharp heeling to be always there, solidly and unchanged, because, such problems are problems that just cannot be corrected and inherently locked there with the basic architectural platform, no matter what application it is (The solutions around us are actually the result of basic architectural platform and the adaptation of project-specific applications and functionalities, and, technologies locked by logical design of basic theory for basic architectural platform setting are the real fundamental technologies that decide how a detail will come to behave when it encounters with real-life mission conditions).
Such circumstance told that, if we do want to realize our dream and offer to our clients solutions that they can reply on throughout their real-life mission handling, we must start from the very origins and the very fundamentals by first resolving the problems of crew injuries and structural/electronics breakdowns that have been found in every of today’s high performance boats because clearly this has dramatically limited the real-life mission safety, performance and survivability of the boats which makes the boats not the ones to be relied on, no matter how good it has been advertised and how pleasing the market document has stated.
And, if we can resolve the problems in the riding behaviors, we will be able to get all the problems troubling our industry to be automatically resolved.
Since then, we set our dream to progress human society with mission to start from resolving the most striking world-class problems that have been troubling us. The first and most important thing we need to do is to change ourselves---We firmly believe that, unless we could transfer our role from engineering and boatbuilding into a research based, problem driven fundamental technology specialist, solution developer and boatbuilder, otherwise we would have no any chance to realize our dream, more seriously, with the deepening of information globalization when engineering technologies, craftsmanship and supplier chains have been made to be only part of the public knowledge and could be easily accessed for all competitors from same industrial chain, only being able to resolve the most striking world-class problems can we build our position to the industry map.
With more than ten years of time already dedicated in efforts for basic research into detail settings, working principles and real-life behaviors from thousands of historical and dynamic solution models from countless physical boats, we have been able to breakthrough the boundary, sharing with the industry totally different way of thinking in problem studying and problem resolving, which also has transferred KINGTOUGH from one of the classic deep-V hull theory based boat designers and boatbuilders to an irreplaceable specialist basic researcher and problem resolver, having the many world-class problems already troubling the industry for more than half a century to be fundamentally removed from the very origins and pushing forward the industry to a totally different world.
As responsible business entity that has carved its destiny through change, we popularize basic science into advanced technology to partner with clients to develop the industry healthier and secure every penny of money from clients to be paid for the real values it desires.
Disciplined by science, we build our justifications on insights developed from many years of real-life observations and field testing. We keep questioning the truth about capabilities of the authority, keep popularizing technology driven science to help turn this terribly misled industry that has been terribly poluted by the endless advertorials in the format of so-called successful stories (Behind more than 99% of so-called successful stories marketed by the so-called top reputed US/EU/UK designers/shipyards are nothing but only endless suffering. It is a shame that such companies still live in keeping telling worldwide users this is just what a best safe, reliable and capable boat shall be like!!) and keep delivering to the world what capabilities of world class shall be like.
Our story keeps continuing. With the original dream and the original mission as guideline, we boldly explore more possibilities for the betterment of our industry and society.
