bmw oracle trimaran

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BMW ORACLE Racing Designs World’s Biggest Wing with Computational Field Dynamics

By Larry Boulden | ❇️

This February, in the picturesque Spanish port of Valencia, BMW ORACLE Racing’s skipper Russell Coutts will take the helm of one of the most technologically advanced – and hopefully fastest – boats ever built, in a bid to capture the 33rd America’s Cup. The most remarkable feature of the trimaran – named “USA” – is that it will be powered by an enormous wing, rather than a conventional sail.

As Mike Drummond, BMW Oracle’s Racing Design Director explains: “A wing of this scale has never been built for a boat. In terms of size, it dwarfs those on modern aircraft. Towering nearly 190 ft (57 m) above the deck, it is 80% bigger than a wing on a 747 airplane.” It was analyzed using a process very similar to CFD, using CD-Adapco’s Star-CCM analysis tools.

In an interview conducted by CD-adapco, Oracle’s CFD Manager Mario Caponnetto explains how STAR-CCM+ was used to optimize the aerodynamic design of the wing, at the expense of traditional wind tunnel testing.

Why this choice of a rigid wing on your trimaran, instead of a conventional sail?

[MC] Rigid wings are not really radically new in yacht racing. They have been used in high performance catamaran races and other racing boats for many years. By the way, a rigid wing first appeared in America’s Cup in 1987. What is radically new is its size: the wing, with its 57 meters above deck, is the largest wing ever, 80% larger than a 747 aircraft wing. No one in our team had designed anything like this before, and this scared us a little bit at the beginning. Starting from white paper and evaluating pros and cons, we decided to move forward and quickly in the project. This project came true thanks to the enthusiasm of our chief designer, Mike Drummond.

What are the benefits and the shortcomings (if any) of a rigid wing?

[MC] The main advantage of a rigid wing is shape control. In other words, depending on the angle and the velocity of the wind, there is an optimal sail geometry that in turn optimizes the aerodynamic pressure field. This makes it possible to extract a maximum propelling power from the wind – to maximize efficiency. On a conventional sail, material works, from the structural point of view, like a membrane and shape control is difficult. Some specific shapes are impossible to obtain and the final shape is a compromise. With rigid sails, shape is much easier to control without compromises. Furthermore, during navigation there is always a feedback between imposed shape and achieved shape, whereas with traditional sails it is already an issue to identify the sail shape during navigation.

What are the aerodynamic benefits of the rigid wing?

[MC] One of the main benefits is shape control, aiming to control lift forces and to reduce drag forces. To do so, the wing is made of a front rotating element and eight independently rotating flaps. This makes is possible to change the vertical aerodynamic load. Between every flap and the frontal element lies a slot that favors air flow between the two sides of the wing. This makes it possible to delay the stall and to dramatically increase the maximum lift. In practice, the wing is able-even with light wind-to lift the central hull of the trimaran out of the water and reduce its resistance, even though the wing lateral surface is less than half of a conventional sail. The wing horizontal sections are more aerodynamically shaped than a thin sail. A sail profile is efficient at a certain angle of attack, more or less when the flow is tangential to the frontal edge of the sail. At smaller or larger angles, a flow tends to separate from the sail, thus reducing its efficiency. The rigid wing, with its rounded front edge, is much more tolerant to variations in the angle of attack. Even at a small angle of attack, the wing will still create lift and push the boat, whereas the sail will beat like a flag and restrain the boat. This is a noticeable advantage during maneuvering, in particular when tacking, and is one of benefits that are most valued by our team’s sailors.

Could you share more details on the aerodynamics simulation aspects?

[MC] STAR-CCM+ is a finite-volume approach to CFD. (It allowed us to) exploit the “client-server” architecture of the CD-adapco software. We could use a remote supercomputing cluster facility located in Italy. While sitting in our offices in Valencia or San Diego, we could check in real time the progress of the simulations running on the cluster. This happened thanks to a lightweight client-or if you like the final user-based on a Java interface, and a C++ server-or if you like the supercomputing cluster.

Second, of course, usage of the supercomputing cluster leveraged the STAR-CCM+ capability to scale well, i.e., to exploit the capability to divide the processing tasks between several processors in parallel. This was necessary since computational meshes for aerodynamics can reach several million elements.

The third success factor was process automation. STAR-CCM+ includes a CFD simulation engine (the solver) but also all the preprocessing phase (including construction of the computational mesh) and post-processing. This means we could build one complete workflow, or pipeline, and implement it over and over again during our optimization studies.

So, CFD is a tool for the happy few?

[MC] Situations like America’s Cup (AC) or Formula 1 require a tremendous accuracy and detail since the engineering situation is pushed to the limit, and the optimization requirements for factors like aerodynamic drag can be orders of magnitude more sensitive than in mass production boats or cars. I think that AC will continue to be one of the best benchmarks for CFD tools that can, in industrial situations, be applied in standard design offices based on small clusters or even PCs. Nowadays, all CFD processes should be automated in industrial situations, whereas AC pushes the application of the code to its limits in terms of physics, computational mesh or hardware resources. This creates a feedback process between the STAR-CCM+ developer, CD-adapco, and CFD teams in America’s Cup or Formula 1, and the feedback has a (benefit) on other sectors.

CD-adapco www.cd-adapco.com

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The BMW Oracle Racing 90 trimaran is a lot of yacht

The BMW Oracle Racing 90 trimaran -- one of the largest, and possibly fastest, ever built -- hits the waters of Rosario Strait for initial sea trials. However, an ongoing court battle will determine if the boat is eligible to race in America's Cup.

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ANACORTES — It’s not that easy to make the jaws of old salts drop around Puget Sound, where shipyards have been cranking out boats of every conceivable size and shape for more than a century. But a carbon-fiber behemoth stalking the waters of Rosario Strait this week is getting the job done.

One look at this trimaran — one of the largest, and possibly fastest, ever built — as she lifts her sails and leaps into the breeze off Orcas Island leaves no doubt: This boat wasn’t built to spend a lifetime plodding through seawater.

She was meant to fly.

Not literally, in a Spruce Goose sort of way. Although in early testing, even in light winds, the behemoth BMW Oracle Racing yacht — which, depending on a court decision, may or may not compete for the America’s Cup in 2010 — has lifted her side floats almost as far out of the water as Howard Hughes’ famous seaplane ever rose.

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This is all by design, on a boat that can squeeze 40 knots out of 20 knots of wind and might yet become the fastest racing yacht ever known.

Even to the untrained eye, the boat, officially known as BMW Oracle Racing 90, is an engineering marvel, one that went from blueprints to sails-up in less than nine months.

Her sleek, carbon-fiber main hull is 100 feet long, stem to stern, and 90 feet at the waterline. Her twin floats are 90 feet apart, side to side. If you dropped the boat through the open roof of Safeco Field, it would cover the entire infield.

When the boat is pushed from its dock by four bumper boats, it appears as if a piece of the shore has just calved off.

The boat’s three hulls are connected by sweeping, aerodynamic carbon-fiber beams that look perilously thin. They have a unique droop to them, making the craft, from the front or rear, look a bit like a Klingon Bird of Prey spaceship from an old Star Trek movie.

The carbon-fiber mast, the only crucial part not fabricated on site in Anacortes (it was built in Rhode Island) is more than 5 feet wide at its elliptical base, and 158 feet tall.

The sails are similarly off the charts: a 5,000-square-foot mainsail; a 3,500-square-foot headsail; and 7,000-square-foot gennaker.

The boat will be sailed by about 15 sailors, wearing protective helmets and high-tech garb that looks like it’s borrowed from NASA.

Those are about the only hard facts revealed by BMW Oracle Racing, which will complete initial sea trials here Saturday, then prep the big boat for shipping on a barge to San Diego a week later. There, testing will be ramped up, as syndicate officials await the decision in a court case which might render the boat essentially useless, in America’s Cup terms.

A bitter fight

The pursuit of sporting’s oldest international prize has devolved into a bitter legal fight between two billionaires: Oracle software icon Larry Ellison of the Bay Area and Ernesto Bertarelli, a biotech mogul who runs the Swiss racing syndicate, Alinghi, which currently holds the Cup.

Since successfully defending the Cup in Valencia, Spain, last year (Ellison’s team again did not make the finals), Alinghi, to put it simply, has been unable to reach agreement with all competing syndicates on a fair format for the next Cup races.

Ellison’s BMW Oracle group last year won a court decision that named it the “challenger of record” for the next Cup, meaning they would negotiate the next Cup’s protocol with Alinghi. When Ellison and Bertarelli could not agree, both sides began preparing for the next remedy under Cup rules: a match race between their respective boats with essentially no design rules, other than a 90-foot maximum waterline.

That is the lesson lingering from a 1988 America’s Cup challenge, in which Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes won a legal decision allowing it to race a multihull against a slower, plodding New Zealand challenger in a San Diego race now considered a low point in Cup history. Since then, it has been taken as a given that any Cup challenge without protocols agreed to by the defender and challenger of record would be conducted in multihulls.

That’s what sent BMW Oracle’s design team into trimaran warp speed on Puget Sound, where the team had built four previous conventional carbon-fiber monohulls with Janicki Industries in Sedro-Woolley, and where other useful composite-construction infrastructure exists because of the local aerospace industry.

But last month, Alinghi won an appeal of that court decision, and announced plans to stage a traditional Cup defense, in monohull boats with multiple challengers, in Valencia as soon as 2009. Ellison’s group is making a final appeal of that appeal, with a decision expected in February or March.

$10 million bet

If Ellison wins, the big trimaran could race for the America’s Cup in what by all accounts would be a spectacular best-of-three multihull match race with Alinghi in 2010.

If it loses?

The designers likely scurry to build a new monohull. And the trimaran becomes a big, fast, very cool, black-and-white elephant, with design and construction costs estimated to be as high as $10 million.

This boat is, in other words, not only a hedge on a bet, but something of a guilty pleasure, and the BMW Oracle sailing team, based for now in Anacortes, is treating it as such. Not even the world’s greatest sailing racers have ever seen anything like it.

“We’re not even at 50 percent yet and it’s already pretty impressive,” said helmsman James Spithill of Australia, the former driver of the Seattle-based OneWorld Challenge Cup team in 2002.

Spithill and famed helmsman Russell Coutts of New Zealand both were hired by Ellison after his most recent, unsuccessful Cup effort, and both are now in Anacortes.

Initial driving duties, however, have fallen largely to Frenchman Franck Cammas, hired as a consultant because of his expertise with mega multihulls, which heretofore have been built primarily for open-ocean racing, and reach speeds up to 44 knots.

The new boat has been sailed only in light to moderate winds, progressively increasing loads on its joints and surfaces. But even at about half speed, the boat is a marvel in the water, its speed deceptive because of its massive size.

When its center hull clears the water and the craft seemingly takes flight, riding on only the knife edge of a single float at about 20 knots, it’s a spectacular sight.

Needless to say, the boat, visible from miles away and accompanied by a half-dozen chase boats, creates a spectacle in the otherwise quiet waters in the waning days of summer around the San Juans. Seagulls steer cautiously wide of it. Snoozing salmon trollers are startled to attention and sent reaching for cameras.

And despite the thrill it gives the sailing team, there’s still a bit of tension in the air whenever the big boat lifts off the water. For each voyage, the boat’s tenders carry — in addition to telemetry equipment monitoring onboard sensors — a physician and scuba divers in case of emergencies.

Design coordinator Mike Drummond, mindful of the high-stakes poker game with Alinghi, skillfully dodged most questions about the big boat’s particulars this week. But asked what keeps him awake at night during testing, he didn’t hesitate.

“Pretty much everything.”

Ron Judd: 206-464-8280 or at [email protected] .

PressClub Global · Article.

Bmw oracle racing wins 33rd america’s cup. the us-challenger defeats the defender 2 to 0., 14.02.2010 press release, munich/ valencia. the bmw oracle racing team has won the 33rd america’s cup, dethroning swiss holder alinghi. the challenger’s spectacular trimaran “usa 17”, with its futuristic 68-metre wing sail, defeated the catamaran “alinghi 5” in the waters off valencia on the second day to record the decisive second win. the best-of-three match ended 2-0 in favour of the us crew of owner larry ellison. this deed of gift series saw the holder and challenger go head-to-head in a straight duel., press contact..

Nicole Stempinsky BMW Group Tel: +49-89-382-51584 Fax: +49-89-382-28567 send an e-mail

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This article in other pressclubs.

Munich/ Valencia. The BMW ORACLE Racing team has won the 33rd America’s Cup, dethroning Swiss holder Alinghi. The challenger’s spectacular trimaran “USA 17”, with its futuristic 68-metre wing sail, defeated the catamaran “Alinghi 5” in the waters off Valencia on the second day to record the decisive second win. The best-of-three match ended 2-0 in favour of the US crew of owner Larry Ellison. This Deed of Gift series saw the holder and challenger go head-to-head in a straight duel.

“Congratulations to Larry Ellison and his whole crew!” said Ian Robertson, BMW AG Board Member for Sales and Marketing. “The goal we have all been working towards for over two and a half years has now been achieved. This has been a fantastic performance by the whole team. As Technology Partner, we have also made a successful contribution to winning the world’s most prestigious sporting trophy. We have positioned BMW as a competent partner in competitive sailing and have firmly established the transfer of technology in the America’s Cup. On the construction side, BMW engineers have set new benchmarks for intelligent lightweight design. Added to which, among the relevant target group, BMW is the highest-profile brand in competitive sailing.”

With 159 years of history, the America’s Cup is the world’s oldest sporting competition and brings together the best professional sailors, yacht designers and boat builders of their generation in the pursuit of perfection. For the 33rd America’s Cup, the BMW ORACLE Racing designers and engineers were charged with one of the most exacting challenges in the long history of the event. The design rules were wide open, and experts from a wide variety of specialist areas, such as materials research, aerospace, composite materials, electronics, data analysis and numerous branches of engineering, have all played their part in the design and construction of the high-tech yacht.

BMW engineers, for example, contributed their knowledge and EfficientDynamics expertise in the area of intelligent lightweight design. The aim was to build a yacht that was as light and torsionally stiff as possible and could stand up to the rigours of the race. In multihull racing, it is particularly important to keep weight low, as the yacht which can raise a float out of the water the quickest has a major advantage. The transfer of knowledge from the BMW engineers was not a one-way street; the valuable expertise gained over the course of the project will all find its way back to the BMW Research and Innovation Centre (FIZ). BMW has been involved in the America’s Cup as a Technology Partner since 2002.

The future involvement of BMW in the America’s Cup will depend on the development and organisation of the competition going forward. As Robertson explains: “We will make a decision on our further involvement in the America’s Cup over the coming weeks. What is already certain is that BMW will continue to be represented actively in yacht racing. We will go on playing an active role in raising global interest in sailing in the future and continue to use projects such as the BMW Sailing Cup and regional events in the various markets as a platform for customer relations and to further strengthen the BMW brand values.”

The BMW Group

The BMW Group is one of the most successful manufacturers of automobiles and motorcycles in the world with its BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce brands. As a global company, the BMW Group operates 24 production facilities in 13 countries and has a global sales network in more than 140 countries. The BMW Group achieved a global sales volume of approximately 1.29 million automobiles and over 87,000 motorcycles for the 2009 financial year. Revenues for 2009 totalled euro 50.68 billion. At 31 December 2009, the company employed a global workforce of approximately 96,000 associates. The success of the BMW Group has always been built on long-term thinking and responsible action. The company has therefore established ecological and social sustainability throughout the value chain, comprehensive product responsibility and a clear commitment to conserving resources as an integral part of its strategy. As a result of its efforts, the BMW Group has been ranked industry leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes for the last five years.

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BMW ORACLE Racing wins 33rd America’s Cup.

BMW ORACLE Racing wins 33rd America’s Cup.

• Stacy  Morris

The US- Challenger defeats the Defender 2 to 0.

Munich/ Valencia. The BMW ORACLE Racing team has won the 33rd America’s Cup, dethroning Swiss holder Alinghi. The challenger’s spectacular trimaran “USA 17”, with its futuristic 68-metre wing sail, defeated the catamaran “Alinghi 5” in the waters off Valencia on the second day to record the decisive second win. The best-of-three match ended 2-0 in favour of the US crew of owner Larry Ellison. This Deed of Gift series saw the holder and challenger go head to head in a straight duel.

“Congratulations to Larry Ellison and his whole crew!” said Ian Robertson, BMW AG Board Member for Sales and Marketing. “The goal we have all been workingtowards for over two and a half years has now been achieved. This has been a fantastic performance by the whole team. As Technology Partner, we have also made a successful contribution to winning the world’s most prestigious sporting trophy. We have positioned BMW as a competent partner in competitive sailing and have firmly established the transfer of technology in the America’s Cup. On the construction side, BMW engineers have set new benchmarks for intelligent lightweight design. Added to which, among the relevant target group, BMW is the highest-profile brand in competitive sailing."

With 159 years of history, the America’s Cup is the world’s oldest sporting competition and brings together the best professional sailors, yacht designers and boat builders of their generation in the pursuit of perfection. For the 33rd America’s Cup, the BMW ORACLE Racing designers and engineers were charged with one of the most exacting challenges in the long history of the event. The design rules were wide open, and experts from a wide variety of specialty areas, such as materials research, aerospace, composite materials, electronics, data analysis and numerous branches of engineering, have all played their part in the design and construction of the high-tech yacht.

BMW engineers, for example, contributed their knowledge and EfficientDynamics expertise in the area of intelligent lightweight design. The aim was to build a yacht that was as light and torsionally stiff as possible and could stand up to the rigours of the race. In multihull racing, it is particularly important to keep weight low, as the yacht which can raise a float out of the water the quickest has a major advantage. The transfer of knowledge from the BMW engineers was not a one-way street; the valuable expertise gained over the course of the project will all find its way back to the BMW Research and Innovation Centre (FIZ). BMW has been involved in the America’s Cup as a Technology Partner since 2002.

The future involvement of BMW in the America’s Cup will depend on the development and organisation of the competition going forward. As Robertson explains: “We will make a decision on our further involvement in the America’s Cup over the coming weeks. What is already certain is that BMW will continue to be represented actively in yacht racing. We will go on playing an active role in raising global interest in sailing in the future and continue to use projects such as the BMW Sailing Cup and regional events in the various markets as a platform for customer relations and to further strengthen the BMW brand values.”

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• Digital Edition

BMW Oracle Now Powered

• October 6, 2009

Following three weeks of modifications, the challenge’s America’s Cup trimaran now has power

Following three weeks of modifications, the BOR 90 emerged today from the boatbuilding tent at the team base in San Diego.

The latest iteration of the giant trimaran the team will use to challenge for the 33rd America’s Cup boasts new features which will be worked up on shore, before the boat hits the water for more testing near the end of the month.

Most significantly, and in response to the new rules issued earlier this year for the 33rd America’s Cup by the Defender, SNG/Alinghi, the team has modified the BOR 90 cockpit to accommodate an engine. For the first time in the history of the America’s Cup, the Defender has altered the racing rules to allow using an engine to replace human power on board the race boats. Since the Cup’s inception in 1851, and in almost all other yacht racing, only manual (human) power may be used to trim sails and do other work.

On BOR 90, the engine will primarily be used to drive hydraulics for trimming the enormous sails – the mainsail alone measures nearly 7,000 square feet – that propel the boat.

Alinghi’s insistence on the use of engines has resulted in the team having not only to add an engine and related gear, but to redesign the boat’s cockpit on the center hull. With the engine, there is no longer a requirement for the grinding pedestals and sailors (“grinders”) who until now provided the human power for the boat, so the cockpit has been reconfigured.

“When we originally designed and built the BOR 90, we assumed we would have to use the crew to provide all the power on board, as that has always been the case in the America’s Cup,” said design team director Mike Drummond.

“With the change to the rules, we’ve had to adapt, adjust and modify. Otherwise, the engine power that Alinghi designed into their boat would have given them a significant advantage. This all part of the process of preparing to race in February. We’ll spend some time with the boat on shore now, doing some finishing work and preliminary tests and then we’ll be sailing again to continue our boat testing and development.”

Fact Sheet – BMW ORACLE Racing 90.

Hull Boat Type: Trimaran of carbon composite construction Where Built: Core Builders, Anacortes, WA, USA Hours to build: over 130,000 hours to date Overall Length: 100-feet/30 meters Waterline Length: 90-feet/27 meters Beam: 90-feet/27 meters

Mast Height: Up to 185-feet/55 meters Where Built: Hall Spars, Bristol, RI, USA; Core Builders, Anacortes, WA, USA

Design and R&D BMW ORACLE Racing Design Team Mike Drummond, Director; 30 designers and scientists Principal Naval Architects: VPLP (Van Peteghem and Lauriot Prévost)

Sails Mainsail: 6800 square feet; (630m2) Genoa: 6700 square feet; (620m2) Gennaker: 8400 square feet; (780m2)

Equivalent Size

• The infield of a professional baseball diamond
• Two basketball courts

Sailing Team BMW ORACLE Racing Sailing Team (20 sailors on BOR 90 testing team)

• Skipper Russell Coutts (NZL)
• Helmsman James Spithill (AUS)
• Tactician John Kostecki (USA)

USA17 (BMW Oracle Racing 90)

In 2007 Russell Coutts approached VPLP to design USA 17 , the fastest racing sailing boat to contest the America’s Cup . Little did the team know that the project would take three years of relentless modifications, improvements and developments to produce a trimaran featuring 35 m floats and a 68 m pivoting wing mast! Proof of the pudding came in 2010 with victory over the Swiss catamaran Alinghi in both races of the 33rd America’s Cup in Valencia (Spain).

For VPLP, it was the most enriching and intense investment of time and energy that the firm had ever known. Winning the America’s Cup justified VPLP’s approach of continuously researching and testing hypotheses. It also vindicated the firm’s policy of optimizing weight, power and simple yet efficient sail plans, a policy applied to each and every boat designed by VPLP.

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