We will be supplying updates on our four ship science group design projects during the year. These projects are relatively unique within UK Maritime courses in their experience for final year students in actually building and testing and getting essential real world experience .
Modern racing boats don’t just sail, they fly. With the technological advancements of the America’s Cup over the past 5 years the sport of sailing is beginning to transition from an old man’s activity to F1 on water. The America’s Cup has turned into a fast paced spectator sport with short races packed with tight manoeuvres and speeds in excess of 30 knots. The Southampton Hydro Aero Research Catamaran (SHARC) looks to bring this thrill of foiling to the general sailing community as well as providing a research platform for use by the University.
Over the next six months our team will be designing and manufacturing three key components that will allow us to convert a 2004 Nacra F18 into a Hydrofoiling machine. The first component will be the hydrofoils themselves. Design work has already begun and we have been using Computational Fluid Dynamics to determine the lift and drag associated with different designs, this will ensure that our foils will be able to lift the boat out of the water. The second component is an adaptable pod system for housing the foils. This key element once built will allow us to attach our foils to not just our F18 but to any small catamaran. This will enable anyone with a small catamaran to experience foiling. The design surrounding this pod will have to do a great deal of research into the forces surrounding it to ensure the materials and structure will not fail. The final aspect of our project will be the installation of a data acquisition system that will allow researchers and sailors to analyse the performance of the boat. This will involve laying up strain gauges within the foils and pods to allow us to observe effects such as tip deflection while sailing. This sort of information will be fed back to a central data logger which will then store data as well as feed it wirelessly to a laptop for live performance feedback.
With this project we look to inspire more of the sailing community to experience hydrofoiling as well as nurturing their interest in STEM subjects. By providing the University with a functional hydrofoiling research platform further studies can be undertaken to advance hydrofoiling design and technology for use throughout the sailing community and within the America’s Cup.
Follow our project on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SHARCGDP/?fref=ts
