队伍成员
Sir Ben Ainsile; Paul Cambell-James; David'Freddie'Carr; Matt Comwell; Nick Hutton; Xabier Fern
赞助商
LAND ROVER; CMC MARKERTS; COUTTS; 11 HOUR RACING; BT; ANNABEL'S
队伍介绍
By Mark Chisnell
One look at any image of an America’s Cup boat at full throttle and it doesn’t take much to work out that one of the most highly loaded components is the hydrofoil boosting the boat out of the water. If winning the America’s Cup is all about maintaining stable flight, then the engineering of the foils is the stuff of which critical paths are made.
George Sykes of PA Consulting is the project manager for the team’s Technical Innovation Group (TIG), a vehicle to bring the very best in British design, technology and innovation to bear on the project to win the America’s Cup. “When we were looking for technical expertise in the structural engineering of the carbon fibre daggerboards that support the boat in flight, and it’s hard to think of a better place to go than our TIG partner BAE Systems,” said Sykes.
BAE Systems were happy to help, and word went out to their military aircraft team in north-west England. Enter Tom Hume: a quietly spoken aerospace engineer from Manchester who admits to an enriching family life and being a keen mountain biker. Or at least, that’s what it says on his LinkedIn profile. Scroll down a little bit and you’ll see that he just happens to have worked on both of the fighters that will form the mainstay of NATO aerial power for the next decade or two; the Typhoon, and the F35 Lightning II. Hume worked on the composite engineering of both planes as part of BAE Systems contribution to the manufacturing consortiums.
Hume initially worked on the Typhoon before spending ten years on the design of the F35’s fuselage. It goes without saying that the man you entrust with composite design on a trillion dollar fighter project probably knows a bit about carbon fibre. Which was good, because his skills were about to be fully utilised.
The design of the America’s Cup Class hydrofoils is one of the team’s most closely guarded secrets, but the general principles are well known. Essentially, there are two conflicting goals. The first is to make the hydrofoil the most efficient shape, and in general, that means that it needs to be thin. The second is to make it strong so that it can cope with as many situations as possible – like being used as a hand brake at 30 knots. And this means that it needs to be fat, to pack in as much carbon fibre as possible.
Working out this conflict for Land Rover BAR is the task of British structural engineer Mark McCafferty and Italian hydrodynamics specialist Mario Caponnetto. “What we are doing is to design the shapes of the board strut and tips that will be the most efficient,” explained Caponnetto. “Then Mark checks the section that I am designing, to check that it will stay in one piece – it’s a loop between what’s possible structurally and what’s desirable hydrodynamically. We have to find a compromise between weight, strength and low drag.”
Mark McCafferty added, “Once we’ve agreed the shape, I’ll define the structure and the materials that we want. Other people in the team will create a 3D CAD (computer aided design) model from that, and then Tom takes that and creates the layup specification and the drawings that the manufacturer will use to build the piece.” The more detail that can be provided to the manufacturing team, then the better the quality of the finished product. These are immensely complex structures, requiring enormous strength and very high precision of shape, and nothing should be left to chance.
“I take a solid representation of the part, the foil, and turn that into a carbon fibre lay-up plan,” explained Hume. “The builders have been very happy with what they have received. The boards are very complex, and to make it a simple task to lay up hundreds of layers of carbon fibre and fit them together in the mould is quite an achievement.
“The people building the board are able to just cut the plies out to the shape that we give them, and put it on the tool and they fit. Normally they would have to spend a couple of days working out what shape each one needs to be manually... now it’s all done for them. It saves a lot of time in manufacture especially on something as complex as these boards.”
It’s often said that the most precious commodity in the America’s Cup is time; the first race in the Qualifying series will start in Bermuda on schedule whether the teams are ready or not. So anything that saves time is a fantastically valuable resource, particularly on such a vital component as the hydrofoils.
“Boards are probably the most significant performance differentiator on our boat – critical for boat speed, boat handling, and flight stability. The support we’ve got from Tom Hume and BAE Systems will significantly reduce our manufacturing time and increase the quality of our boards, and in doing so will make a significant impact on our campaign,” concluded Richard Hopkirk, Engineering Manager at Land Rover BAR.
