Second year FSI PhD student Laura Marimon Giovannetti reports on her attendance at the High Performance Yacht Design conference held in Auckland during the Volvo Ocean Race stopover.
The topics of the conference were mainly on sail and wing-sails aerodynamics, foiling and yacht hydrodynamics. Regarding universities researches, the hot topics of the research from the University of Auckland are mainly experimental techniques for downwind sailing aerodynamics and slamming motions. Moreover, a presentation from the Politecnico di Milano was given on sails flying shapes detection. Ecole Navale presented work on strategic decision making in yacht match racing and one on cavitating hydrofoils. The representative from Edinburgh university was not able to come and therefore I was the only representative for the UK HE sector but their main studies are alongside the ones from the University of Auckland on aerodynamics of sails (numerical approaches).
Interesting keynotes were given by Burns Fallow (from North Sails) that explained the development of the AC72 wing and by Paolo Manganelli (ex FSI PhD, now at Gurit) who gave a lecture on the load monitoring system of the VO65.
Not only the conference was extremely interesting, but there was a good mix with the industry visits to Core composites – that builds Oracle – , Southern spars – that builds the rigging of the VO65 – and the University of Auckland) gave me the possibility of understanding the research and development that are performed in the southern hemisphere.
My presentation on passive adaptive composite performance of NACRA foils was followed by very constructive discussions. It also allowed me to mention the University of Southampton’s facilities, from our tests in the R.J. Mitchell wind tunnel as well as the new towing tank!
The Volvo Ocean Race stopover gave me the possibility of interacting with Knut Frostad (the CEO of the Volvo Ocean Race) and to better understand the Team Vestas Wind incident. Finally, given my sailing career, I was fortunate enough to be a guest onboard Team Alvimedica on the practice race, where I have helmed in the final downwind leg!