Sailing Dynamics
Abstract
Since 2015 Chalmers is a National Sports University with obligations to carry out research within Sports and Technology. Three areas have been selected: sailing, swimming and equestrian. This proposal is within sailing. The primary focus here is on Olympic sailing, which is presently only done in dinghies. We develop, one the one hand, the sailor equipment like the hull, centerboard, rudder and sails and, on the other, the sailing technique, especially when sailing in waves. One PhD student is engaged in this project. In 2019 we had three MSc projects in this area and at present there is one ongoing MSc project. The SNIC project also includes a student project at Chalmers called Formula Sailing, where the students design, build and race an extreme dinghy. At present we have around 30 students from several programs and levels engaged in the project. Around half of them are also enrolled in a Tracks course where the core development of the dinghy is taking place. New for this year is also a project aimed at using wing sails on a commercial ship. This is a new trend worldwide and many such projects are underway. Our part in the project is the develop the wing sails and study their interaction. This is done by another PhD student. Since 2017 we have published 5 journal papers and 5 conference papers on sailing research. For the upcoming INNOVSAIL 2020 conference in Gothenburg in June we have offered 3 papers. Note that all sailing projects require massive computing power, since they are all based on Computational Fluid Dynamics.
