AFT helps BMW Oracle Racing win the 33rd America’s Cup
In the late afternoon of Sunday February 14th, 2010, USA-17, the 115ft trimaran of BMW Oracle Racing, crossed the finish line ahead of Alinghi’s catamaran to win the final race of the 33rd America’s Cup. The victory returns the America’s Cup, the oldest trophy in sports, back to the United States for the first time in 15 years. Team New Zealand last removed the Cup to the southern hemisphere way back in 1995.
The BMW Oracle Trimaran was a marvel of engineering resulting from over two and half years development. Applied Fluid Technologies played a crucial role in that development, and was in charge of the boat’s entire aerodynamic package. Our contributions ranged from definition of the sail plan; to optimization of the individual sail shapes; to mast section shape and profile design; to development of sail trim and yacht performance targets. AFT software and personnel proved crucial in helping designers and sailors obtain maximum performance from the rig and boat. But AFT’s contribution didn’t end there. Great efforts were made to reduce overall platform windage (by managing both CFD studies and a large-scale wind tunnel program), and to design aerodynamic fairings for the boat’s various structural elements.
When the idea of a rigid wing sail become reality, AFT was asked to lead the 3D analysis of various design candidates. Its cutting edge CFD tools, verified once again by wind tunnel results, helped steer the design into its final form. Once an extensive performance analysis of the final design was completed, and the computed forces turned over to the performance engineers, AFT’s attentions turned to the design of foresails for use with the wing. These sails proved essential to BMW Oracle’s success in the light wind conditions encountered during racing off the coast of the Spanish city of Valencia.
Because of his extensive expertise with viscous flow, Dr. Korpus was also asked to look into the possibility of a drag reduction system. In collaboration with Professor Steven Ceccio (University of Michigan), he developed a system to test the concept of polymer drag reduction on sail boats. A prototype system was built and tested on a 40 foot racing catamaran, and proved highly successful during sea-trials. A more complex production version was therefore designed for the America’s Cup race boat, and assembled by the BMW Oracle shore team. Sea trials on the trimaran showed the system to be a huge success.
During the almost three years spent consulting for BMW Oracle Racing, Applied Fluid Technologies made significant contributions in a wide range of design areas: from above the water to below; and from computational aerodynamics to wind tunnel testing. Each, in its way, helped BMW Oracle in its successful quest to win back the oldest trophy in sports.