ABSTRACT
An ABAQUS finite element analysis (FEA) of the main strut of a foiling Moth high-performance sailing dinghy has been developed and validated experimentally with full-scale mechanical tests representative of the sailing condition. Agreement between experimental and numerical results was excellent, solely by using engineering-based choices for both the internal structural arrangement and the pertinent experimentally based library material properties, i.e., without the need for ‘calibration’ of the model parameters. This gives a high level of confidence in the validation of the FE model. The FE model is the first stage of the ongoing development of a full fluid-structure interaction (FSI) tool, which will be obtained by combining the FEA with a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. This FSI will be a valuable and economic tool in facilitating evaluations of different foil appendage lay-up and fabrication methods designed to optimize the sailing performance.
