Challenge:
Competitive sailing requires robust part design in order to withstand the higher loads placed on the boat and its components during aggressive racing. At the same time, the designs must be as lightweight as possible to remain within race-class weight requirements. Advanced engineering company iXent was called on by the owner of racing sailboat Alegre 3 to contribute to strengthening and lightweighting a key component design.
Solution:
iXent used Tosca Structure, Isight and Abaqus to develop a design for a winch gear that would undergo extreme stress during operation.
Benefits:
The company was able to deliver a highly optimized part design that had not previously been explored. SIMULIA’s products enabled them to quickly consider alternative designs and arrive at the best solution.
The graceful swoop of a racing sailboat through ocean waters is a compelling sight. There’s the slice of streamlined bow through the waves, the dramatic shift of massive sails, the side-to-side rush of the crew as the boom swings and the boat comes about—and the flurry of “coffee grinder” teams frantically winding the winches to drive the rope lines that fine tune the whole performance.
The manpower that makes those winches work is impressive: Two sailors, facing each other, grab and turn a pair of handles together at breakneck speed. The rotational force they generate is transferred through a gear to a large winch controlling a variety of running-rigging lines. These lines—halyards, downhauls, sheets, etc.—are either tightened or released by a whole series of deck-top winches that change the position of the sails and boom. A recreational sailboat employs lighter, one-handed winches, but it’s a different story on a racing boat, where up to six two-person teams must supply the manual energy that drives all the vessel’s key working components.
“The more aggressively you sail these racing boats the higher the loads on the winch-gear structure get,” says Thomas Hahn, founding partner of iXent, a German technology consulting and engineering services company that specializes in applied lightweight engineering of composite materials. He should know: Hahn and co-founder Christoph Erbelding helped design components for the U.S.’s Oracle Team USA sailboats that won two America’s Cup championships.
Want to learn more?
Read how advanced engineering company iXent employs the power of the SIMULIA portfolio to optimize and lightweight a key composites component for a world-champion racing boat.
