L'Hydroptère: A story of a dream

In 2009, l’Hydroptère broke the symbolic barrier of 50 knots and became the world fastest sailing boat over both 500 meters and 1 nautical mile. This major achievement relied on the high skills of the sailing team but also on technical advances of the boat, resulting from long years of studies and development. This achievement is also an open window to a new goal: flying around the world. In the present article, we present this long and incredible story, highlighting the different steps, the technology involved, and the background of that project.

A novel tool to compute the non-linear dynamic behavior of an hydrofoil sailing yacht

This article presents a novel method to compute in an efficient way, the coupled fluid-structure non-linear behaviour of hydrofoil sailing yacht. A parametric model of the pressure exerted by the fluid on the hydrofoil is determined from steady state 3D fluid simulation taking into account free surface and cavitation. The fluid pressure is applied to a calibrated structural model taking into account the local and global structure deformation impacting the local angle of attack and fluid velocity. This tool was used to compute the maximal stress in the linking arm of the Hydroptere when sailing on flat water and in wave conditions. Non-linear and transient behaviour of the structure is found to significantly impact the maximal stress in the structure