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NelsonFoils said..
ARC
If you can find the time great .
Nice work you have done .
Love your workshop ! and what you make in it .
First of all , let's make it clear, I'm not smartest guy in the room. My design is sequence of wing sail development based on research and development made by others. As I said before , good ideas never grows in one place and fully mature. 2 years ago me and my partner Alex, we went trough many others published ideas, and I'm pretty sure that I saw this drawing before. I's not only you, Nelson Foils, also many other people fall into thinking, that wind, is going to blow airfoil into desirable shape. Actually it will do exactly opposite. Simple rule, body in rest want to stay in rest. Difference btw wing sail and conventional sail is that wingsail do not fail in high loads and will take much more abuse. In your drawing you put spreaders btw battens, where you hope ,that wind pressure would displace battens in desirable airfoil, meaning your airfoil depends on wind speed , humidity, temperature, altitude, weight of the sailor and quality of hydrofoils, all with high loads? Remember Harrison Ford in In 6 days 7 nights? This is the island, If you want it here , you bring it here. Same with airfoil, If you want specific airfoil, you put it there and enforce it. On top of this , reliability of the structure, you have 6 battens, each of the batten has 2 pivoting joints and 1 attachment on the front, it makes 36 total points of possible failure. So reliability of your structure will be as good as one of 36 joints. Let me put cherry on the top of the cake, how do you waterstart that thing!? What happened in case of hard crash with 36 points of failure?
This is how I solve this problem. My mechanism located under the boom, it makes virtually inaccessible to impact , plus it has only 3 parts, each part has long slut for shock absorbing. But even If mechanism goes to total fail, you still able to sail back to shore , with less efficiency. Top of the sail has 3 independent air-filled balloons between panels, it's like triple safety system. Aerodynamically, sail designed to hold its shape in hard condition, meaning, harder it blows, sail become stiffer. I think, I'm pretty sure, that this system will revitalize sport and bring more youth , because it will make it easier to learn and safer to sail.