This month, at the 25th Chesapeake Sailing Yacht Symposium in Annapolis, the Audace Sailing Team from the University of Trieste presented an innovative study on sustainable hydrofoil design. The research leveraged ESTECO’s modeFRONTIER software to implement a multifidelity optimization approach, enhancing the performance of foiling sailboats while integrating natural fiber composites.
The Audace Sailing Team is a student-led sailing research and development team from the University of Trieste, Italy. They focus on designing and building high-performance, sustainable foiling sailboats, with a strong emphasis on innovation and the use of eco-friendly materials.
As part of our continuous relationship with academia, we're proud to sponsor their adventure and to share their achievements.
The study, written by the team with Enrico Nobile – Scientific Advisor at ESTECO – showcases an innovative approach to high-performance sailing, leveraging sustainable materials and advanced design methodologies. The research represents a pioneering effort in incorporating flax fiber composites — accounting for more than 50% of the hydrofoil’s weight — into the design of an international moth foiling prototype.
By combining tools like XFOIL and XFLR5 (to define the baseline design) and velocity prediction program (to estimate hydrofoil performances in real conditions) into the modeFRONTIER simulation workflow, they could test thousands of geometric parameter combinations resulting in a multi-objective optimization process that also accounted for structural strength.The most promising configurations were then subjected to high-fidelity optimization, utilizing parametric modeling and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. This targeted approach significantly reduced computational effort while ensuring optimal performance.
The effectiveness of this workflow was validated when the first set of race-ready hydrofoils was successfully manufactured. The Audace Sailing Team flax fiber boat not only demonstrated the viability of natural fiber composites but also secured first place overall and the best design award at the 2023 SuMoth Challenge.
