Turn of the tide?
Kai Graf, Hannes Renzsch and Christoph Boehm of the Yacht Research Unit in Kiel review recent advances in flow simulation methods and revisit the necessity for towing tanks and wind tunnels in contemporary yacht design...
The most recent 33rd America's Cup left us all with some degree of awe for these monstrous, super-fast multihulls that had clearly pushed modern yacht racing to a new level. However, less obvious to the wider sailing community is that the event also introduced fundamental changes in the design paradigm.
Whereas formerly tank testing was still regarded as the ultimate investigation tool for flow optimisation, the principal development of BMW Oracle Racing's wing sailed trimaran USA was carried out using CFD-based simulation as the major – and senior – design tool. In fact, the only significant tank testing in the BMW Oracle multihull programme was a small study of float behaviour; and the wing programme never saw the inside of a wind tunnel at all! And it is not only BMOR who now accept flow simulation methods (Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFD) as a first- class flow analysis and optimisation tool. Most top modern performance yachts are designed with at least some input from CFD analysis. Today CFD is known to be accurate, fast and, provided the users are suitably skilled, reliable.
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