Abstract

The two main objective of this work are:

- To develop a simulation program of the behaviour of upwind sails and
rigging, to help the crew to optimize the performance of the sailing yacht in
real time. For this purpose, it will be necessary to formulate a fluid-structure
interaction algorithm to compute the performance of a particular sail/rigging
configuration. Since the crew dynamically trims the rigging and sails, in order
to evaluate the performance of the actual configuration, a tool to monitor
the rigging and sails will be necessary, too.
- To adjust a monitoring element to quantify in physic values the manoeuvre of
the crew. This will be our monitoring tool.

- To reproduce the crew manoeuvre in the simulation program with the data
obtained with the monitoring tool. Once the sail/rigging configuration has
been adapted ‘in real time’ to the actual one, the performance of this new
configuration can be computed. For this purpose the simulation program and
the monitoring tool must communicate among them.