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Technology

High-Tech Hydrofoil 68

Posted by michael from the faster-than-a-speeding-coast-guard-cutter dept.
An anonymous submitter sent in links to a super-sophisticated hydrofoil/catamaran which intends to break various water speed records for wind-powered vessels. Max speed: 45 knots. A couple of fansites have more photos of the craft in action.
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High-Tech Hydrofoil More

High-Tech Hydrofoil

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  • Re:Is this a water or an airship? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Dude, this thing is much more than just a perfected version of a hydrofoil. That thing has 160 sq meters of sail area. The forces on that sucker are insane.

    Cats are extremely easy to flip. Thier center of mass is above water and it doesn't take much wind to force it over. Instead of riding on two hulls, imagine instead riding on two small hydrofoils. That boat is probably damn hard to sail.

    Of course, if the hydofoils had control surfaces (which I don't think they do on this boat) the design might actually afford some measure of control to a cat. Maybe this technology is the thing to make cats safe.
  • > Thing 2: Current speed sailing record is 46.52 knots, held by Yellow Pages Endeavour

    "break various water speed records". Not necessarily including the outright speed record.
    From the Alstom site: '"Hydroptère" has the ambition to beat world speed record : 24 hour distance world record, the Altlantic crossing record and the Pacific crossing record.'

    Can you really see YPE doing a 24 hour run, let alone a Pacific crossing?
    --
  • ...Kevin Costner drinking his own piss in the background in one of those pictures...
  • Formula 40 boats have dagger boards that are very long and 13-15 inwards. So when both boards are fully down the boat tends to lift up on them.

    This is also applied to some 60' racing trimarans.
  • They say flying. In sports catamaran sailing we say fly a hull.

    The father of the modern ocean going hydrofoil is tha late Eric Tabarly. He won races and beat the transatlantic record on "Paul Ricard" back in the late 70's
  • I have lots of sailing magazine info in French and of course local newspaper articles.

    Airbus Industries is also involved from the beginning as is the local governement. Saint Nazaire is the place where lots of high tech cruising ships and central pieces of Airbus planes are built. Also bits and pieces of Mirage fighter planes etc. So lots of composite fiber expertise is to be found here.

    The boat is pure carbon fiber on honeycomb.
  • Neptune? The watergod planet...
  • http://www.moth.asn.au/development_wa_2001.html [moth.asn.au]
    I find the hydofoiling moth much more impressive

    BTW how long has /. been a sailing forum :-)

  • I have to question though, why is is being posted on /. It's not something I'd have associated with the /. crowd. Perhaps I need to reconsider the site demographics...

    It's not because it's a sailing craft, It's simply Cool Tech(tm), and it's irrelevant where it's being used.



    ...
    Yes, I know I ramble and my spelling isn't quite up to scratch. If you wish to complain,
  • This is why you don't own a sail boat :-)
    Nice boats are very expensive. One of my hobbies it flying small planes. They are cheap compared to a decent sailboat. While on a diving trip in Cairns Australia, I meet a guy with a nice 45 ft sailboat that only set him back about us$2m but he was taking it back to France to trade it in on a nicer boat. It did have some cool features like it could automaticly bring in the sails if it got too close to any other boats and its auto pilot was smart enough to sail it by its self on the open ocean.
  • The thing I never understood about this boat is the whole concept that as the wind gets stronger, the boat goes faster, lifts higher, and consequently has a narrower waterline beam to work with, giving it less righting moment. If I recall the tried this boat about 3-4 years ago and a whole outrigger/wing blew up.
  • Your post is probably correct, but the thing is that supercavitation IS possible on the hydrofoils because while the whole vessel isn't submerged the FOILS are completely submerged, and they certainly can be taken as vessels on their own.
  • This is the perfect toy for a former windsurfing spead junkie! As far as a windsurfer, and perfect for these aging muscles! It might not be as fun, but speed is addictive!
  • I appreciate your view on this, but (and I'm far from being a physicist!) I'd assume that supercavitation could occour on a partially submerged object.
    My understanding is that the submerged object is surrounded by an envelope of "air" because it moves so quickly and produces so much pressure, that the water around the vessel is turned to vapor. I don't understand why this wouldnt' also be true of an object that is partially submerged, and producing the same types of forces underwater.
    (Maybe I'm an Idiot)
    Travis
  • The faster it goes, the further forward the apparent wind is coming from. If you can get up on foils (and out of your own way) you goto close hauled real quick.

    Hit a big wave, it stops; hopefully with nothing broken. But you touch on why I don't think they'll break the Trans Atlantic Record, any kind of chop is just murder on this kind of boat.

    GA, show up for a race in this. Depending on it's performance on all points of sail, nobody would want you competing, but I promise _EVERYBODY_ would want a ride.

  • Actually, the TriFoiler is closer to 16' LOA, and 20' Beam. The POS speedo is marked to 35 mph (OEM for powerboats) but it pegs at about 40-ish, then can keep accelerating (!) Some people estimate the speed to top out at about 38 knots.

    The problems are many. I forget what the limiting factor is for speed, but cavitation sounds about right. It's also highly speciallized. Upwind and downwind it's pretty limited; but the reaches just scream. Also, if you don't have 12-15 knots of wind, stay on the beach. The thing is _really_ frustrating without enough wind to get off the foils.

    That said, it is still a really cool boat.

  • Well where I live the sea breezes in summer are regulerly 25-30 knots, so that thing should fly!

  • The potential speed reaches 45 nodes today. The mean velocity will be about 30-35 stabilized nodes. On new the foils, the appearance of the phenomena of distribution and cavitation was pushed back beyond 50 nodes.

    Well, either Google's translation leaves something to be desired, or... heck, I can get better ping times than that on my 14k4 :-)

  • Methinks Google needs to work on the ole translator. My LISP freng does a better job. Reading that bogon was like drinking silly putty through a straw.

    Boat sorta looked like a windjammer on stilts.
  • The world does not all speak English.

    Besides, the first link [google.com], was a Google translation of the French site.

  • "True, but this is an English website" and this "...but it just struck me as very odd..."

    Fortunately, for us, not everything interesting in the world happens in English speaking countries. I'm glad Slashdot does not restrict itself to English stories. The world will be a sad place indeed if different languages are lost because of the "internet" language.

    That is why it is legislated in France that French sites must be in French.

    C'est ci bon

  • I don't think it would be like flying, for the simple reason you are not floating on a pocket of air. Both airplanes, and hovercraft float on a pocket of air, hence why a hovercraft is a lot like flying.
  • "... which intends to break various water speed records for wind-powered vessels"

    So they made this thing sentient, then?
  • How did this guy get to be an anonymous "submitter"? Was he not as cowardly as the others who've anonymously submitted in the past?
  • True, but this is an English website. Wouldn't it be a bit odd if the New York Times published an article in Chinese?

    I speak a tiny bit of French, so I could understand what they were saying, but it just struck me as very odd...

    And no, it wasn't a Google translation. It was just a straight link.

    ----------
  • 45 knots is like over 80 kph. and if you look at the pictures it is doing this on a beat ... ie it is headding into the wind. and it has an asymetrical spinaker pole so on a beam reach with an a1 kite (the biggest asymetrical sail for a bit of a broad reach) this thing will kill it.

    Any slashdot readers who have been keeping up with the round the world races will see that this thing rocks. I have only a cuple of questions ... what happens when it hits a BIG wave ... the mega cats competing in the race didn't fare well in the open ocean and this thing looks even more delicate. Or when it hits a whale (I am not kidding ... it happens) I can forsee a serious fiberglass repair bill for someone

    the only remaining question is what will my yacht club (the CYCA for any aussies) do when I turn up for a race in something like this ... I think they will shoot me (or tell me that they don't allow multihuls to compete)

  • I remembered seeing a trimaran [windrider.com] like this a couple years ago. Turns out they have been publicly available since 1998 for ~10,000 bucks. Not to bad, eh?
  • 45 knots is like over 80 kph.

    Should've been:

    45 knots is like over 80 km/h.

  • This thing appears to be based on the design of an ice boat. The daggerboard probobly hits the water about every third wave. After sailing it, anything else would seem like kissing your sister.

  • Damn! (Score:1)

    by XBL ( 305578 )
    "Then Hydroptere will be on standby in New York for a trans Atlantic crossing. The goal is to beat the Atlantic Ocean crossing record, held by Laurent Bourgnon on Primagaz of 6.5 days by crossing in less than 5 days."

    Now that's impressive, for something with sails.

  • Am I the only one who finds it strange that hydrofoils would have fansites? I'm a Bluenoser myself... should I set up a sailpage?
  • True, they had water craft with sails. But they are polynesians, which means they have absolutely nothing to do with sailing! Next thing, you're going to tell me that the yahoo down at the reservoir in his power boat is sailing too.

    So, a catamaran, or trimaran for that matter, is not a real sail boat! To early polynesians, the catamaran was the equivalent of a family station-wagon. Today, the fiberglass catamaran represents the unhealthy democratisation of a once meaningful pasttime. First skiing, now this?
    KTS:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Utensil.

  • Ehr... where to find wind that blows at speeds > mach 1 then?
    • Imagination is more important than knowledge.
  • I do think that I see at least the rudder boards on the 'wings', but it's not visible if it has any other control surfaces. I wonder just how much control the rudder boards give at high speeds and how safe this is. Imagine one rudder blade to get slightly misaligned with the other, I figure that would make the hydrofoils snap off like a twig.
    • Imagination is more important than knowledge.
  • Do you shun dacron sails as well? What about nylon ropes? Plastic cleats? Some of the very first sailing things on water were catamarans(although this racer would like everyone to note that this particular boat is a TRImaran, I know... picky picky). Get a life! Sailing is fun, enjoyable, and extremely competitive sport. You and your club aren't doing anyone any favors.
  • I agree, sailing has some of the wildest tech going nowdays.

    I have family members actively involved in various americas cup syndicates. The boats are more like formula 1 cars, with US$50,000 GPS units (4 inch accuracy anyone?) front and rear to plot position and velocity when rounding marks, some of the most advanced carbon fibre construction and sail vision technology that flexes the mast in response to a video signal to give the optimum sail shape for the conditions.

    There is still a fair bit of intuition involved in design though. The American syndicates just can't understand how the New Zealanders get the boat speed that they do without the involvement of NASA and the use of supercomputers. (An uncle with a European syndicate said that they have had NASA engineers over critiquing their designs, but they were under a tight deadline due to the computers needing to be used for the National Missle Defence system!)

    Or maybe they just don't understand anything that is not powered by petroleum.....
  • Hovercrafts are used in marine enviroments.
    Thats because it moves over water in great speed
    and when it comes to the shore it can contionue with same speed
    over rough terrain.

    So its not a watership sinse it uses all terrain,
    but is neigther an aircraft sinse it cat fly on different altitudes.
    It hovers and thats why it is an hovercraft and nothing else.

    <?php echo chr(bindec(1000000)) ?>

  • That's about $8 million. That's a hell of an expensive boat, considering it's size. You could make a full scale solid 24K gold replica of it for that price!
  • Don't we say : "C'est SI bon " ??? ;)
  • cOjones btw....cajones = boxes.... Anyhow, I remember seeing this craft in action on French TV (Thalassa) about 6 years or 7 years ago....man this was really great....When reaching the appropriate speed, the boat would slowly "raise" on his keels, and float at an astounding speed about 2 meters above the ocean.

  • Yellow Pages Endeavour is a planing vehicle which is VERY different to a hydroplane based craft. One skims the water and the other lifts as much as possible entirely out of it. Wetted surface area on both is TINY, and so both are theoretically fast, but the hydroplane has got to be able to handle at least some waves whereas YPE would no doubt disintegrate. YPE ran for (and got) the speed record in a depth of <1m of water after all. So under real conditions Hydropetre is more promising - especially for the 24hr distance record which it looks like they're going for.

    Big cats and tris are WILD, so one that's largely out of the water(!) is definitely the regime of those French nutter who are brave enough to push these things hard (and Grant Dalton of course :)

    The cats in The Race [therace.org] were routinely at 35 knots so I don't think 45 is out of the question for a radical craft. This has been under development for a long time after all.

    Hey, didn't many of the Formula40 cats and tris have some sort of hydroplane appendages? They were way cool... Are there pics of them anywhere? I only have one Becken calendar... :-/

  • You can't cross the atlantic in 5 days on a calm sea. You need wind and lots of it. I talked to a swedish guy (can't remember the name) who was in a crew that attempted the atlantic record a few years back. They waited weeks for the right weather conditions : a typhoon ! Gog
  • This was built just down the road from my office.

    It is the second version - the first one broke during testing.

    It is on beautifull piece of carbon fiber under sail. As long as it doesn't hit anything hard in the water (whale, container, tree trunk...) it will hold the new transatlantic record.

    It is not meant to beat the outright speed sailing record, but it possibly could under the right conditions.
  • I'd be interested to see them take this a step further. Add an additional servo controlled element at the foot of each foil. When the boat starts to heel over the servo reduces the lift on the upwind side and increases lift on the downwind side.

    The beauty of the canted main foils is that they automatically counter heeling. As the boat heels, the lee foil is immersed further and consequently generate more lift; meantime the weather foil is immersed less deeply, and generates less lift. Additionally, leeway causes the lee foil to have an increased angle of attack and the weather foil a decreased, or even negative, angle (although lift from the lee foil acts counter to leeway, and it's possible to tune a hydrofoil to sail with very little leeway at all).

    For totally neutral heeling the resultant vectors of the lateral foils should cross at exactly the centre of effort of the rig; if the resultant vectors cross above the centre of effort, you'll get negative heeling!

    So, sorry, your Linux box isn't needed - not for that anyway!

  • Sailing hydrofoils were one of my first real technical engagements - I was following developments (and experimenting myself) thirty years ago. The places for information about these things are

    Even ocean going sailing hydrofoils aren't new, and they are a lot harder to design than 'round the bouys' boats. Dave Keiper's Williwaw [wingo.com] did a number of offshore passages in the 1960s - my memory is he did San Francisco - Hawaii, but I can't find any confirmation of this just now.

    For me the problem with the Hydroptere design is rear steering. The risk is that with the centre of effort of the rig being high, the stern of the boat will be lifted out of the water leading to a forwards capsize - this is why, for example, ice yachts and land yachts no longer rear steer. Still, lovely boat.

  • looks to me like a single rudder on the middle hull, which is normal for a trimaran. what looks like small rudders on the foils are more likely analogous to the fin on a surfboard, which is used for directional stability. another option would have been 2 rudders (analogous to most catamarans), 1 on each outer hull. only the rudder on the leaward(?) side (away from the wind, lijzijde in dutch) hits the water and is used for steering. That said.. I've done some sailing and it's quite possible to completely loose control at high speed. this is NOT a fun thing. as someone mentioned though.. a forward flip would be worse(I know.. I've done a forward flip once, although not in any of this hightech stuff. An Optimist at 10+ beaufort will do just nicely) don't plow your bow into a wave at 40 knots!
  • when this trimaran (three hulls, trimaran. two hulls, catamaran) hits a whale at about 40 knots, I do not only see a big repair bill. probably the lifting planes will instantly disintegrate, and there's this sliced and diced whale in its wake. big mess. hit whale, whole boat drops down about about a meter, which may not be such a smart idea at 40 knots downwind with the gennaker up. still pretty cool thing though, but I would have used rigid sails for a real speeddemon. btw.. anyone found a pic with the 240 m^2 gennaker?

    //rdj
  • hmm... cool, you can actually attend regular races with a hydrofoiling moth.

    for the non-sailers: the Moth is an international class which is VERY loose in its design. overall length of the single hull(on waterline), mastlength, surface area of the single sail, and effective mastlength are most of the requirements.

    It will probably become a strict class though, which has happened before with Moth designs. the olympic Europe class was originally a Moth design, which turned out so good that that particular design won most races. This design is now the Europe.

    //rdj
  • it scares the crap out of me. This thing just looks unstable. They are talking about doing a trans-Atlantic race. All I have to say is the crew of that thing has some cajones. Sure is beautiful though.
  • If a fully submerged object can break mach 1 due to cavitation (sp?) why couldn't a hydrofoil blade do so as well?
    tcd004
    Piceze [piceze.com]
  • According to www.speedsailing.com [speedsailing.com] the current record for 10 sq metre sail craft over a 500 metre course, is 45.34 knots - in 1993. As the site's name suggests, there is more infomation on most aspects of speedsailing - including hydrofoil design - at the above address.
  • No really... there is a hydrofoil type sail boat that looks very similar to the one shown out for a while now. It's a Trimaran. The official product page is here: http://www.windride.com/wrrave.shtml [windride.com] (I think that's the official one) These things get out of the water at about 18 knots I beleive. I've seen them at one of the local marinas where my friend has his sailboat. The go much faster than a sail boat and that's before the rise above the water.
  • Hydrofoils are nothing new but I have to say, this thing looks pretty slick. I'd love to take it out for a spin.

    I have to question though, why is is being posted on /. It's not something I'd have associated with the /. crowd. Perhaps I need to reconsider the site demographics...

    About the hydrfoil... it's a nice evolutionary step, building on an established technology. Not quite as inspiring at the earlier article on the newest entrant in the cement canoe race [slashdot.org].

    --
  • Check out some of those picture, you can really pop a wheelie (well, a rudder) with those things!
  • I'd be interested to see them take this a step further. Add an additional servo controlled element at the foot of each foil. When the boat starts to heel over the servo reduces the lift on the upwind side and increases lift on the downwind side. In extreme conditions it might even need to generate significant downforce to keep the boat level. This is quite a big step, because most of the structural members would need to handle new loads, but it should result in a faster ride.

    They could even run RT Linux on a PC104 system to monitor speed and servo angle to avoid stalling the additional surface. I'll volunteer to go along and keep an eye on it :-).

    Best of all - it would look pretty damn cool at high speed with a stream of water shooting up behind the upwind 'foil. (Well that momentum has to go somewhere).

    Just an idle thought,

    Keith.

  • But you touch on why I don't think they'll break the Trans Atlantic Record, any kind of chop is just murder on this kind of boat. Although if they plan on doing the crossing in less than five days, they'll sit and watch the forecasts until they figure they'll have five days of relatively calm seas and go for it then. Not just any five days will do!
  • As with hovercrafts, one always has to wonder if this is 'boating' or 'flying'. Anyone who has ever taken a ride (mandatory silly wordjoke) in a hovercraft will tell ya that it resembles flying a lot.

    This hydrofoil looks incredibly awesome, I wish I could take a trip in it. It's not quite such new technology however. Hydrofoils have been around forever, this is just a more perfectioned version of it all.

    • Imagination is more important than knowledge.
  • Untitled Document

    here is one that you can actually afford [hobiecat.com]. this thing rocks !! take a look [hobiecat.com] - i am salivating now

  • Re:45 Knots? I don't think so. (Score:3)

    by Bagheera ( 71311 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @10:04PM (#78199) Homepage Journal
    I was going to mention Yellow Pages Endeavour - the truely exotic Australian "Speed pod" as they call it. (That particular "boat" is almost impossible to define as anything but an "it") Of course, Yellow Pages can only sail on one tack, which makes it rather limited.

    I also seem to recall the TriFoiler was getting close to that speed, though it suffered from cavitation problems.

    While we may never see 45 knots on a cruising foil, it should be possible to cram some accomodations into a sailing foil - even if it would never be practical as a production boat. (You have a better background in this than I do though. I'm just an ME and avid sailor)

    And, just for the record, this boat is NOT a catamaran. Cats have two hulls. This is (loosly) a Tri.

  • More information required. (Score:3)

    by Self Bias Resistor ( 136938 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @10:10PM (#78200)

    Does anyone have any web pages that are more specific about the technical aspects of construction, such as material composition and so forth? The fact that this craft looks to be capable of 50 knots (92.60000000000001 km/h or 53.895mph thanks to Suntron Velocity Conversion [sutron.com]) means that it would have to be constructed out of some pretty space-age type of materials (Carbon Steel, Titanium alloys and Carbon Fibre Composite come to mind here). The problem with the link provided by Slashdot is, besides the grammar difficulties involved in the translation from French (or any other language for that matter) to English, is that the details are sketchy and therefore it amounts to little more than your average press release. So if anyone has any interesting info they can post here, then go right ahead.

    At any rate, I think the fact that this design was assisted by such large organisations as EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company) and CNES (Center National Space Studies) means that there's some pretty serious money being invested in this project. Also, the expertise being invested here is also amazing, given that the project has backgrounds in such high-tech fields as aeronautical and space engineering. So it's very likely that this will be more than a flash in the pan and that this will pave the way for bigger and more ambitious projects.

    Self Bias Resistor

  • Re:More information required. (Score:3)

    by Regolith ( 322916 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @10:59PM (#78201)
    Check out the first fan site [google.com] listed in the abstract. It appears to have some more technical details of the composition/construction. Looks like a lot of Mylar and honeycomb composites.

    -----

  • 45 Knots? I don't think so. (Score:4)

    by WasterDave ( 20047 ) <davep@z e d k e p.com> on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @09:39PM (#78202)
    OK, I have to go soon, so just a quick note:

    45 knots on a sailing hydrofoil with, like, cabin and somewhere to make a cup of coffee? I think not. Without going into details just accept that I went to University *just* to study this problem (I came to computing through writing fluid dynamics code) and you can take it from me that it won't be happening.

    Thing 2: Current speed sailing record is 46.52 knots, held by Yellow Pages Endeavour (http://www.mko.freesurf.fr/innovoile/YPE_e.html), so 45 knots won't even get them the speed record. YPE claims a top speed of 54 knots, and to be honest I believe them. Even if they are Australians.

    Dave

  • Foiled Again (Score:4)

    by Spaztek ( 59587 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @09:28PM (#78203) Homepage
    I love it, maybe we can make the foil into semiconducters, write an assembler language, then port linux and cluster it

  • Supercavitation Explained (Score:4)

    by Self Bias Resistor ( 136938 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @10:31PM (#78204)

    It's an interesting thought, but I think you're missing the point of supercavitation. Supercavitation is only truly effective (and truly possible) with vessels that are completely submerged in water (eg. submarines, torpedoes and the like). It works by creating a renewable pocket of air around the vessel, so that very little of the liquid touches the surface of the vessel. This reduces the vessel's viscous drag (bearing in mind that the resistance of water is somewhere in the order of 1400 times that of air) and allows it to travel much faster. This isn't the sort of thing that can't be done with a partly submerged vessel, as is the case here.

    If you're interested in learning more about the specifics of supercavitation, then is an article on the Scientific American [sciam.com] website and two articles on Slashdot (here [slashdot.org] and here [slashdot.org]). It should be interesting to see what the possible future applications of this technology would be. As always any constructive criticism is welcome.

    Self Bias Resistor

  • the Hydroptere in English (Score:4)

    by sasha328 ( 203458 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @09:43PM (#78205) Homepage

    There is a page on the Alstom site (an official sponsor of the project) here. [alstom.com]

  • Re:Is this a water or an airship? (Score:5)

    by Kwikymart ( 90332 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @09:34PM (#78206)
    Hydrofoils are a funny thing. They still operate on the theories (whatever they are) on hyrdrodynamics, so they are still considered boats and not hover crafts. You can actually get your own personal-type model. Click here [ravepage.com] for more info.

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