Congratulations to New Zealand for the terrific result in winning back the America Cup.
The boats truly represent a pinnacle in terms of Lightweight Structures:
- superlight and stiff fabrics used for sails
- elaboarte cutting patterns to achieve the desired three dimensional shapes in the sails
- orientation of the fabric to resist stresses and maintain the profiles to generate maximum driving forces
- like many fabric structures, the wind loadings are the dominant load case
- very flexible supporting systems from high tech materials
- minimal weights and reliance on moving ballast etc.
In 2013 the LSAA had their Conference in Auckland and we were fortunate to have a presentation about the 2013 NZ efforts.
Well done guys.
