Modern racing yacht semi-planing hull forms provide a number of complex challenges for designers and a minefield for those involved in yacht rating.
The SYRF Wide Light Project was initiated as a means of providing data with which to assess a range of alternative computation methodologies to analyze sailing yacht hydrodynamic forces and moments, making this data available to the entire sailing yacht research community and demonstrating how this type of study can be used to inform the rating process.
This paper presents a comprehensive set of tank test results in both canoe body only and appended configurations to be used as a benchmark for a defined geometry of a modern semi-planing hull. Five different CFD stakeholders carried out ‘blind’ CFD analysis on the same test matrix using a range of different computational codes and approaches. The results are presented here along with feedback detailing the software, methods and resources used to generate the results.
This project offers a comprehensive set of public domain data which researchers may use to validate and develop their numerical tools and highlights how successfully commercial CFD codes may be used to confidently predict the variation of the forces on a sailing yacht hull as speed, heel and leeway change. Finally, discussion will be made on how this first phase of the project may be used to inform handicap rule makers.
