Imagine if baseball pitchers could routinely throw fastballs at 150mph. Imagine if sprinters could routinely break the 3 minute mile. And imagine if such advances were possible within the next few years.
That is the kind of dramatic improvement the sailing world has seen over the last decade especially in the America's Cup races. The top speed has literally tripled and that has required new forms of armor for crew members. But it is not just speed, there are all kinds of rules to keep in mind similar to that in football with penalties (which negate the speed advantage) for false starts, encroachment and out of bounds. And pages upon pages of design guidelines for the size and shape of the sailing vessels, limitations on their weights and many other arcane rules apply. The photo shows a penalty for a start a split-second too early. Machine referees made the decision.
Oracle invited me and a few other analysts to witness a few races last weekend in Bermuda. It is a vendor of many of the technologies used by the USA team. In this blog I write about the design thinking and material science which has gone into these yachts. Next I will talk extreme athletic conditioning and performance of the crews, the broadcast technology which brought the races to millions of fans around the world and the data science which went into the analysis of mountains of data before, during and after the races
The yachts in Bermuda followed this template with customizations like Team New Zealand used bicyclists instead of grinders and had a very different split of responsibilities across the 6 member crew compared to the other teams (click on image to enlarge)
Designing them brought in software like that of Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform. These yachts used rigid wing sails unlike the cloth sails of old. Just as planes use wings parallel to the ground to create upward lift, perpendicular sails create forward motion in the water. This required expertise from the likes of Airbus, which brought some of the latest thinking that has gone into its new A350 around aerodynamics, material science and load calculations.
The wing sail (and the smaller jib) are made of light but sturdy carbon fiber and covered in a shrink-wrapped film of Clysar, with flaps adjustable for different wind conditions. Hidden inside are hydraulics that allow the wing trimmer to operate the flaps and to twist the structure to improve performance. Compared to the sails on the AC72 yachts used in the last Cup four years ago, the drag is down by almost a half and can produce almost twice as much power. The video below shows the 3Di technology used in precision manufacturing of the film.
The two hulls have honeycombs made of aluminum and DuPont aerospace grade Nomex paper - again designed to be sturdy but light. The mesh trampoline allows the crew to switch sides during tacks and gybes. The steering wheel the helmsman used to control the foils and rudders comes from automotive expertise. BMW Motorsport engineers helped create the bespoke wheel for the Oracle team with two twist grips and a variety of sensors and electronics embedded in the wheel. Team New Zealand used a joystick instead for some of their maneuvers.
Even a super-efficient sail can only do so much to offset water resistance. So these boats are designed to fly. At sea level, air is almost 800 times less dense than water. Foils, controlled via dagger boards, lift the hulls into the air, dramatically reducing drag and allowing for 15 to 20% improvement in speed. As Nick Holroyd of the Softbank Team Japan said "the holy grail is to have your boat do a complete lap of the course without ever touching down". Even while tacking. The foils are designed to lift the 3 tons of crew and boat into the air. At only about the size of a surfboard these foils do some incredibly heavy lifting. And each team was only allowed to bring 2 pairs so they had to be durable. The photo below shows the “FlyTime” in a race the US team lost.
Unlike planes, however, the fuel for take off comes from human generated hydraulics. Incredibly fit grinders (and cyclists in case of the New Zealand team) generate the propulsion. In a tech talk session, an Oracle team member called it their "oil". The most efficient use of the oil and its storage in accumulators on the boat make a huge difference. Enter companies like Parker Hannifin a leading provider of motion and control technologies in the aerospace sector. From pitch control for the daggerboards to wing control, the Parker systems allow the USA crew to fine tune how the boats perform.
Controlled chaos. Good way to describe life on these incredible machines. No wonder the USA helmsman, Jimmy Spithill got a pilot’s license to help him learn to manage the chaos.
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