A foiling breakthrough was one of the early and critical elements that helped drive Emirates Team New Zealand to near-success at the America's Cup in San Francisco in 2013.
The Kiwi boat was the first contender for the 34th Cup to achieve stable 100 per cent foiling performance but the defending Oracle Team USA ultimately retained the Auld Mug in a winner-take-all 19th race.
This week at the 5th High Performance Yacht Design conference in Auckland during the Volvo Ocean Race stopover, Burns Fallow, part of the four-man ETNZ aerodynamics team responsible for the impressive wing sail, shared the research and design methodology that along with foil design and other work contributed to the race boat's performance.
Nick Hutchins, Design Director at ETNZ, Steve Collie, Harold Youngren and Fallow comprised the aero team. Fallow presented their paper "Aerodynamic Design Development of AC72 Wings.
The replacement of the traditional mainsail with a wing was expected to be a major aerodynamic design challenge requiring a wide range of new expertise, Fallow said.
"As it turned out the design process involved some new tools and tricks but was largely a refinement of computational approach and methods used in the 32nd America's Cup." -- Keith Taylor
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