École Nationale Supérieure de
Techniques Avancées

Abstract

The computation of the hydro forces in an optimization process of a sailing yacht is detailed here. Different methods exist for the computation of these hydro forces and a non-viscous virtual towing tank is used here. The non-viscous virtual towing tank is simulated with APID, a freesurface potential flow solver developed at the MAritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN). The quality of the results obtained with RAPID for the evaluation of the hydro forces on a bare hull, a winged-keel and a fully appended sailing yacht is compared. A new set of optimized parameters is defined for the size of the freesurface and the panel distribution on the hull and the free-surface. A tool is developed to facilitate the creation of lifting surfaces in RAPID. Eventually, a small optimization loop is performed, where RAPID is coupled to the Velocity Prediction Program of the University of Southampton.