Composite design for a foiling Optimist dinghy
Paper in proceeding, 2018

In April 2017, a foiling Optimist dingy designed entirely by students, was successfully tested under standard sailing conditions in the waters outside Gothenburg. In order to achieve take of wind speeds as low as 6 m/s, a stiff and lightweight design of the dinghy and its foiling components was necessary. There have been few successful attempts to make an Optimist foil in a stable manner, as such there were no standards or recommendations available for the design. Therefore, a simulation driven structural design methodology for hydrofoils, centreboards, centreboard-to-hull connections, and necessary hull reinforcements using sandwich structures was adopted. The proposed design was then manufactured, allowing for a significantly stiffer hull and a 20% decrease in weight over a conventional Optimist. Excluding the rig and sail, the final weight came to 27 kg.

Author

Carolyn Oddy

Chalmers, Industrial and Materials Science, Material and Computational Mechanics

Elias Blomstrand

Daniel Johansson

Niklas Karlsson

Niklas Olofsson

Petra Steen

Martin Fagerström

Chalmers, Industrial and Materials Science, Material and Computational Mechanics

Leif Asp

Chalmers, Industrial and Materials Science, Material and Computational Mechanics

John McVeagh

Matz Brown

Christian Finnsgård

Proceedings

Subject Categories

Mechanical Engineering

Applied Mechanics

Areas of Advance

Materials Science

More information

Created

12/22/2017