COMPUTATIONAL ANALYSIS OF TWIN-SKIN CLOTH SAILS FOR HIGH-PERFORMANCE SAILING VESSELS

Current efforts to reduce carbon emissions have brought a resurgence of interest in sail design. Sails could be used to supplement conventional propulsion on cargo vessels or even be used on future energy ships. Energy ships are conceptual vessels that would roam the oceans harvesting energy using hydroelectric turbines and the power developed by sails. To further the estimates of energy ship power production, a towable drag device was designed and built to provide data about the effect of a hydro-electric turbine’s drag on a vessel’s speed. In addition, computational fluid dynamics studies were conducted on a new twin-skin sail design to determine its potential for use on energy-ships. This twin skin sail differs from traditional sails by using two cloth elements to create an airfoil-like section with finite thickness. Both fluid-structure interaction and typical static simulations were performed. Findings show that the twin-skin mainsail aerodynamically outperforms all but two-element rigid sails. In addition, twin-skin mainsails have the ability to be reefed or completely taken down, making them more manageable in extreme weather. This performance in addition to its ease of handling makes it a good fit for use on an energy-ship. Future work should be done to analyze this design in three-dimensional flows as well as the effects of mounting multiple sails on a single vessel.

Department dc:contributor.department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE)

Grantor dc:publisher

Monterey, CA; Naval Postgraduate School

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Caraher, Sean P.

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Hobson, Garth V.
• Platzer, Maximilian

Statement dc:rights

• This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10945/67682

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:calhoun.nps.edu:10945/67682