Could Britain finally clinch it? Load cells and the America’s Cup
It’s probably the most elusive trophy in British sport, given to the winner of the oldest active competition in international sport, the America’s Cup. The first ever race saw 15 yachts race around the Isle of Wight, with the New York Yacht Club taking the prize. The Americans held onto the top slot for 132 years before finally losing to Australia in 1983. Since then, only New Zealand and Switzerland have lifted the trophy.
Sir Ben Ainslie aims to change all that this year, claiming the Cup for Britain. He knows how it feels, having been part of the winning USA team in 2013. However, since then, the boats have changed almost beyond recognition.
Today’s America’s Cup hydrofoil technology boats have been described as the “Formula 1 of the seas”, and with good reason. The monohull AC75 boats can reach speeds in excess of 53 knots. As a BBC article explains:
“Thousands of hours of high-tech designing testing with computer simulators take place to develop an America’s Cup yacht.The British team’s naval architects worked with engineers from Formula 1 giants Mercedes – who are also backed by Ineos – to develop their boat, Britannia.
It is made up of 120,000 individual parts and has five F1 cars-worth of electronics capable of producing more than 3000 datapoints within half a second for engineers to analyse.”
How much data is too much?
Ironically it’s that very volume of data that can be an issue, as an article in Yacht Racing Life explains:
“The sharp end of sailing is a numbers game and load sensors play a pivotal role. The volume of data can easily become overwhelming and it’s often a challenge to calibrate, manage, store and interpret it effectively.”
The solution is to build the load cells into the ends of the rigging itself:
“With a load pin, you’re bending the pin and measuring the strain of bending. That relies on getting the setup for calibration and the setup on the boat exactly the same. As soon as you start pulling in a slightly different direction the pin is no longer calibrated to do that.
‘But if you’re pulling in line with the rig there are no arguments, you can’t possibly pull that in a different way because it just gets pulled in tension. So we know the calibration we do in the lab is exactly transferrable to the setup on the yacht.’”
Load cells can be placed in turnbuckles, upper or lower end headstay terminations, and lashing eyes for the upper end of running backstays.
Start as you mean to go on
Load cells can ensure that new yachts perform at their optimum from their first moment in the water, as explained in a YouTube video:
“Getting your rig right from the outset, when you initially step the mast, can prevent wear and tear, by ensuring it’s within its safe working loads and performing to its optimum. (With load cells) you can ensure your setup is what the manufacturer has recommended in their specifications. This gives sailors reassurance that when they go out for the first time in their new yacht, they are within the safe limits, it will perform as it should, and unnecessary wear and tear is avoided.”
Trickle-down technology
The technology from these elite racing yachts has also “trickled down” to use on club racing boats and cruisers. Load cells can be used with load pins, bottle screw gauges, toggles and running rigging gauges.
According to an article at Yachts and Yachting:
“Traditional load sensing solutions have been easily damaged and typically require regular re-calibration. Fully pre-calibrated, and extremely durable, smartlink sensors can be installed and left onboard for months at a time, with assured accuracy to within 1% – providing huge benefits for teams through gruelling testing, training and racing campaigns.”
As an article at Yachting World explains, load cells can be key to success:
“Safety: Load cells in the shrouds can also be a good indication of when a boat is overloaded, triggering a reduction in the sail plan.
Furling: Load cells will help successful furling of headsails both on and off the wind by enabling an exact tension to be replicated each time.
Trim: Load cell data gives a numerical value to sail trim which can be replicated in a precise way … (Sailors) are not reliant on marks on ropes, or the deck or memory of sail shapes to sail well.”
In addition, the use of sensors has even trickled down to sensors for dinghies.
The America’s Cup
Both the men’s and ladies’ boats will be battling it out in Barcelona to see who can claim the Cup. In the end, it might be the tech and testing involved that clinch the races. As Sir Ben Ainslie himself said:
“The America’s Cup is a development and tactical game capped off with the sailing race at the end of it. It’s been a great collaboration between selling and Formula 1.“
The Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup takes place between 22nd August and 27th October 2024 in Barcelona, Spain. You can follow all the racing action at https://www.americascup.com/
Test to destruction
Want to see how to test to destruction a foil arm for an AC75 racing yacht? of course you do! See our previous article here: “Load cells and destruction testing”
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