Appointment period: 1/2/2024 – 31/1/2027

Moshe Bram has a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the Technion, Haifa, and an MA (Cum Laude) from the Department of Maritime Civilizations, University of Haifa. During the 36 years between his B.Sc. and MA studies, he worked in the military and civil industries in various positions, which have enabled him to bring engineering and R&D approaches, together with multi-discipline knowledge, to his research in the maritime field. His MA work, under the supervision of the late Prof. Yaacov Kahanov, Dr. Yoav Me-Bar, and Dr. Deborah Cvikel, is titled ‘Bending and torsion of wooden planks in ancient shipbuilding’. Its main result demonstrated spring-back: planks that had been bent and twisted in elevated heat and moisture conditions tended to straighten partially after immersion in seawater, a phenomenon that indicates residual internal stresses in planks used in wooden hull shipbuilding.

Moshe Bram fulfilled his Ph.D. thesis under the supervision of Dr. Yoav Me-Bar and Prof. Deborah Cvikel in August 2023 titled: ‘Aspects of shipbuilding in antiquity (2600 BCE–1000 CE)’.

His work investigates the method of shaping by heating over an open fire, twisting and bending long planks to conform to the shape of the hull, a method which seems to be the simplest. A possible by-product of this process was the charring on the face of the plank which would become concave at the end of the process, as observed on many shipwrecks.

The shaping process introduces internal stresses in the plank, which, when released from the constraints, tend to cause it to revert partially to its original form. This is known as ‘spring-back’. In his work, the spring-back phenomenon was investigated and quantified by a series of experiments.

As an example of a different process, the work deals with the production methods of the extra-long planks (sheer planks) of the mid-3rd millennium BCE, Khufu-1 ship.

E-mail: bramoshe@gmail.com