Trimaran Concept

I'm new here - hi everyone!

So, since I had the pleasure to ride on a Dragonfly 920 in Kiel last year I am pretty stoked about the performance of multihulls.

I am a student of industrial design and engineering in Dresden. Last winter I did my internship at Audi industrial design. We had the chance to choose our own project so I decided to give it a shot and design my own trimaran.
They liked the design but it is pretty hard to have a discussion with brilliant car-nerds who have never been sailing. And that's why I'm here. I want to share my design and see what you guys think about it.

I can share more photos and ideas from time to time if you like it.

PS: pls don't smash it instantly

have a good day!
-Paul

 

Welcome to the forum, Paul. Your Trimaran looks very nice and I like the design. But I do not know the displacement (etc.), your calcs for the folding crossbeams, the volume of the floats, the waterline beam of the main hull, the profile and the math for the foils. Kind regards, Manfred

 

Good looking.

The position of the outer AKA hinges would be a problem. There is an exteme bending moment at that point and your hinge does not have the thickness. I won't even bother estimating.

If you put the hinge out over the AMA the bending stays in the solid aka and the hinge can have solid support added when sailing (a lock when amas are out).

 

I think it's gorgeous! Your ama foils might do better if the inboard tip was raised a bit similar to the TNZ foil in AC 34. The reason is to take advantage of the intrinsic heave stability of that type of foil. This may not be necessary because when the boat is heeled it should have the required dihedral to the horizontal portion of the foil.
Looks like you've done a great job.
You might enjoy some aspects of this thread-start at the back end. It is about a Test Model of an exact scale 19.5' sport trimaran that uses uptip ama foils and a wand controlled main foil on the daggerboard. http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/mu...f-righting-trimaran-test-model-36058-158.html

This ama foil has automatic altitude control, no moving parts and requires no adjustment while sailing:

 

welcome to the forum,

nice concept, nice wide beam with the conveinence of a narrower beam for transport and storage. The biggest concern i would have as an engineer is the pivot points of the beams. It could be made to work but the fittings would be very heavy and bulky, and costly too. If the pivot was designed to be longer pin in double shear, rather than cantilevered off the pivot, it might save a lot of weight, and spread the load over a larger area on the main hull.

Even better might be to design the beam more like a truss (or half truss in this case) with an upper and lower pivot. Though the lower pivot might tend to strike waves and water surface (causing drag), at higher speeds you will have most of the main hull out of the water riding on the lee hull anyway.

For a fast sailboat, weight is the enemy. so you have to be weight conscious with the design. Obviously your other goal is ease of storage and transport, so that will compromise the weight, so the design challenge is to achieve the desired convenience with the least weight (and cost) penalty as reasonably possible.

good luck with it.

 

Clearly you are an industrial designer, not an engineer. Design mission accomplished, but you need to see how pretty it is when it is actually a boat that can function.