High Performance Reefable Wingsail Rig Design and Pre-deployment Trial

Oceanic Wingsails, IDPortal Engineering and Southampton University are collaborating to refine the aerodynamic, structural and composite design of novel reefable high performance wingsail to maximise power delivery in order to poduce significant carbon reductions across all headings. This project is seen as a crucial stepping stone to an at scale deployment of a smart, reefable wingsail for commercial deployment. The wingsail will be designed taking into account practical yacht design and working vessel scalability. The overall goal of the project is then to demonstrate the novel wingsail along with predicted GHG emission reductions as deployed.

Wingsails with flaps analogous to those used by an airliner wing when taking off and landing can generate significantly more drive than a conventional sail of similar size as well as sailing closer to the wind. This allows the use of a smaller sail with a lower mast height, making it less obstructive to commercial loading/unloading operations in port as well as enhanced sailing performance.

Current high performance rigid framed wingsails with integral masts need a crane to rig/derig the boat every time it is used as the wingsail cannot be safely left up for long.

This project is based on an innovative and patented system for enhancing the performance of sailing rigs by enabling a high performance film based wingsail covering material to be utilised while allowing it to be reefed or furled/stowed completely, facilitating its use on oceangoing vessels which have to be able to cope with severe weather. This is achieved by using wingsails based on rigid transverse frames which can straighten out to allow the sail covering on either side to be flaked or furled. This allows the performance advantages of a rigid wing sail with film based sailcloth/covering to be retained while allowing the sail covering film to be reefed or removed altogether while leaving the mast in place.

This project uses Computational Fluid Dynamics to improve the aerodynamic performance of a prototype slotted wingsail and the structural design of the composite wingsail mast and framing as well as applying the lessons learned from an earlier proof-of-concept prototype to develop practical and robust systems for hoisting and controlling the wingsail.