Vo70

All This Ranting and Raving might be valid if this race was using production designs. These are extream designs, and structures. Things will happen, and it is dangerous. F1, Indy, Climing Everst, etc... all have inhearent risk-- Sure things could be made fool proof, but who would be interested in racing "K" cars at Indy with rev. limiters so they could only go 50 mph. These crews have accepted the risk and they are athleats at the top of the sport. 508 Miles in 24hrs Wow!!!!!

 

Risk

Doug, you don't think the huge number of structural failures over the last few years in multies and monno's involved in ocean racing is indicative of any kind of problem?
I agree with you about the crews : they are top notch athletes with a hell of a lot of courage and determination.

 

I knew it, no way it'd break up just from launching off a wave at 20kts (unless it was hopelessly under engineered)

 

where did you get the info about a collison? All the websites I've seen are saying it was the hydraulic ram shelf collapsing and causing the bulkhead to start to collapse.

 

http://www.volvooceanrace.com/news/article/20051115/221005/index.aspx?bhcp=1

how is your spanish?

 

"how is your spanish?"

not too good, but i got a translation web site. thanks for the link

 

was koen that posted it up the thread a little

 

Dougs response about restrictions in other racing sports is WRONG. ALL the other sports are mature and responsible enough to elimanate hazerdous conditions when they appear repetively. Restrictor plates are constantly increased to keep Indy speeds to vehical driver surviving standards. Head restraints to prevent murderous whiplash. Stronger carframes. Safer tires. Hell, any other sport has the moral backbone to protect the athletes. -----------------------As it stands now, the winner is to be the luckest boat. Forget design, money or crew ability. It is a useless, boring, dumb luck event.

 

These teams don't have several years and tons of tax-payer money to do their research, so they do it the oldfashioned way- Empirically.

Anyway, in my not-so-humble opinion, I think the "culprit" here is the carbon construction, or, to be more specific, the prepreg carbon construction. With prepreg you not only get good fiber to resin ratios, but also much better fiber-straightness than is possible with wet or infused layups.

That leads us to the crux of the matter, these boats are very, very stiff, and with a stiff structure, you don't have the luxury of spreading shock-loads out over time. Instead, since this is in essence an "area under curve" issue, it has to endure much higher peak loads.

That said, I personally think prepreg carbon is the right way to build a race-boat, but it does make for a very unforgiving structure.

As for damping the peak loads from a canting keel, how about just leaving a little gas bubble in the hydraulic cylinders?

Yoke.

 

Racing boats breaking is hardly a new thing. They have been breaking ever since people started racing them.
The Sea is a dangerous place and even comercial ships and well prepaired cruizing yachts can run into problems.

There are safty regulations covering the designs, the equipment carried and the training that the crew have to have.

Maybe the margins have been shaved a bit tight on some of the boats, or the crews dont yet have the experiance on them to know just how far to push, but that will change as the race continues and repairs/modifications are done in port.

 

Last night, I met Paola Cariboni, very smart and intelligent girl, daughter of the owner of Cariboni Industries, who are specialised in making the hydraulic systems and the keels for the majority of racing boats that use canting keels.
I have invited her to participate in our discussions and she agreed to do so.
Particularly I informed er about my question about "canting keels in production yachts and she will supply us with some comments on that one.

If any questions, put them here and meanwhile I give Paola the whereabouts about our Forum.

 

For the ones that don't speack spanish. More detail too.


http://www.yachting-world.com/auto/newsdesk/20051016162506ywvolvo06.html

 

Hydraulics /keels

So far I haven't been able to find any back up of the story of Movistar hitting something but I'm still looking.
D'ARTOIS, as best as I can tell so far there have been no failures of the VO 70 hydraulics or keels.
I'm not sure what the failure is on Paul Cayards boat -some kind of seal? Would Ms. Cariboni have any knowledge of that problem?
===========================
Thanks Vega-that makes a HUGE difference! I feel a lot better about the other boats if ,indeed, the collision caused the damage inside....

 

The photo in the attachment says it shows the trailing edge of the keel and the rudders. It would appear they are actually showing the leading edge of the keel and the tips of the boards.

Interesting taper on those boards as well, not what I would have expected to see.

 

isnt Movistar's hydraulic ram breaking a hydraulic failure?