Sailing yacht rig design with FEA

Does anyone have a guide to the distribution and calculation of forces for sails that I caould use as a basis for fatigue analysis by FEA on a mast?

Distributed main luff, then head, tack and clew force vectors.
Forestay loads from the jib, and the head tack and clew as well?

Looking at it it's not trivial.

What do others do for load simplifications which will still give a good result?

 

Did you contact Eric? He shoud have some tools.

Regards
Richard

 

I read his rule of thumb guide but the class societies that accept FEA for the rig don't get very specific on just how some of the variables should be handled, I just found a spreadsheet in the repository here which is interesting.

 

Nah I meant PM or mail contact.

He will most probably have much more than the published stuff. Or at least access to the nice tools you need.

Regards
Richard

 

This is GL's approach. There's a simpler version for smaller rigs on their site as well.

Thought there would be a good response to rig FEA but maybe it's too specialised.

I think a good test is at GMmax hauling down at the masthead as only a transverse force. Then do your non-linear analysis. And add 1.5 as a safety factor. If everything survives that load then fatigue is not going to be an issue transversely.