DESIGN, VERIFICATION, AND FORENSIC CORRELATION OF COMPOSITE YACHT STRUCTURES

摘要

High performance marine composite structures are common in many competitive arenas. This paper highlights the lessons learned through analysis, testing and post-failure review of some of the composite structures used by Team Dennis Conner during the 2003 America's Cup. Materials were almost exclusively carbon fibre/epoxy prepreg laminates cured at elevated temperature and pressure. Specific research topics included resin/fibre content, full-scale testing of portions of the deck and rig and forensic analysis of the rig and hull. A side note includes a discussion of another post-accident structural analysis. The primary structural analysis tool was finite element analysis, which was seen to be reliable. Computational fluid dynamics combined with historical on-board data were used to generate many structural loads.