During our second Volvo Ocean Race campaign, we started an ambitious project aimed at assessing the performance of these boats sailing through ocean waves. The key question was whether design features that showed promise in calm water would perform well in waves; how much bow fullness was desirable and what was the real affect of spray rails. We ran many extreme design candidates, plus our reference hulls and final design hulls. We ran a series of characteristic ocean waves, from chop to swells, including different heights and directions.
Interestingly, we found drag reduction for appendages with certain combinations of oscillatory motions in pitch and heave, read more about flapping foils.
© 2013 Cape Horn Engineering. All Rights Reserved.