A substantial amount of research has been carried out in the past to enhance the testing techniques and to increase the accuracy associated with tank testing of sailing yachts. The majority of this work was associated with high budgeted campaigns; large models, long waiting times and high budgets became standard practice in the field. This led to lack of accessibility for low budgeted campaigns and for designers of ordinary sailing yachts to these tests.
A research study has been initiated to investigate the scale effects associated with tank testing of sailing yachts. The intention has been to make best use of modern experimental and computational methods to understand the scale effects in conjunction with systematic tank tests. Both viscous and wave components were considered for investigation of scale effects in sailing yacht performance prediction. Four different scale models ranging from 1/4 to 1/10 of a TP52 yacht have been tested in the towing tank in upright and heeled condition while full, half and quarter scale computational analysis have been carried out with a RANS code. The wave pattern measurements were conducted for all upright and heeled cases with the use of three wave probes on each side. Variation of drag, side force, running attitude and wave pattern have been investigated. This paper focuses on the experimental investigations both in the upright and heeled conditions.
