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Cross-industry innovations fuel BMW ORACLE Racing’s design evolution
In the fiercely competitive world of the America’s Cup, the smallest design innovation can make a significant difference to a boat’s performance. We spoke to Ian Burns, design co-ordinator of the USA’s BMW ORACLE Racing team, about the developments that led to the design of this year’s ultra-performance yacht.
For the general public, the America’s Cup is a prestigious event that takes place every few years – the Formula One of the sailing world. But for Ian Burns, design co-ordinator of the BMW ORACLE Racing team, it’s a way of life. “I signed up to my first America’s Cup team in 1985, for the ‘87 Cup in Fremantle,” he says. “You could say that I’ve
been working on the design for this year’s yacht from that moment.”
Burns heads up a design team of 35 structural engineers, designers and sailors, all of whom share a common goal: to find the fastest yacht design within the given width, weight and sail area constraints. For all of the competing teams, innovating within these constraints means making constant refinements that will give their boat the edge
on race day.
This year, for example, Burns is proud of a breakthrough that has allowed BMW ORACLE Racing to do away with ‘jumpers’, a set of wires that support the upper section of the mast. Instead, the mast is supported internally, providing an extra degree of aerodynamism. It’s the result of years of development work, explains Burns. “[Competitors] Alinghi and Luna Rossa both trialled these types of rigs, but have gone back to the old way, while we maintained our development path and achieved
our goal.”
Successful developments like these can only come from a highly skilled team that combines engineering expertise with a profound understanding of the mechanics and realities of sailing. The BMW ORACLE Racing design team boasts several PhDs in areas like structural analysis and fluid dynamics, but Burns stresses that what unites the team is their innate feeling for the sport. “The team ranges from guys with PhDs to guys with no formal qualifications who have come from the sailing side,” he
says. “Everyone is passionate about the technical aspect of sailing.”
There’s no question, however, that a considerable amount of the team’s expertise comes from the BMW engineers who have been able to import design innovations from the automotive industry. “These guys brought ideas that had not been applied to boat design previously,” Burns says. “They came up with new concepts and designs for the boat that allowed us to reduce the weight while still maintaining a stiff, rigid structure. That meant we were able to take weight out of the hull and put it into the lead bulb
which counterbalances the sail’s force, which keeps the boat more upright.”
Although developments from the motor industry, such as increasingly lightweight carbon fibre materials, have contributed to the boat’s design, it’s not the only sector informing the way the BMW ORACLE Racing yacht is designed and tested. Software innovations from the defence sector have provided the team with computationally-intensive programs for modelling the performance of the boat in the water. Says Burns: “These computer programs are our primary design tool now. At the last Cup we were using physical models, now we’ve made the transition to computational models.” One of the advantages of this approach is the ability to share performance data among a geographically distributed team. “We have a web-based database for collecting and analysing all of our test results, which lets our designers around the world view the performance
of the boats in any condition we choose. No one else is using a database this way,” says Burns.
The team also makes use of Oracle technologies for team working and data management. Oracle Collaboration Suite is used for meetings and online collaboration between team members who are based all over the world. The software allows designers to share drawings, sketches and ideas as well as standard files and calendars. Some team members have also become experts in using Oracle Application Express to create instant web pages showing data comparisons in a graphical format. “Often they’ve produced the comparison while we’re still talking,” says Burns. “I don’t know of any other tool that can make a
graphical representation in seconds from such a deep, rich data infrastructure.”
The power of the Oracle database also comes into play when the team need to retrieve and examine video footage of boats in action. “One unique thing we have is a large video archive of all of the racing, and we’ve been able to tag interesting moments, such as a spinnaker hoist, or a collision, and retrieve that for analysis,” says Burns. “We can have 15-25 people pulling the same piece of footage off the servers simultaneously. It’s a credit to the speed of the Oracle server and the power of our NetApp filing
system that we can do that.”
Burns concedes that no matter how technically advanced the design of the boat, there are still many variables at play on any given race day. Sadly, for BMW Oracle Racing, the semi-final in Valencia went in rival Luna Rossa’s favour, denying the American team the chance
to challenge Swiss defenders Alinghi in the June America’s Cup Match.
For Burns, however, there’s no time for despondency. He and his team are already looking forward to the next Cup, and planning the next tranche of innovations that will bring the boat even closer to perfection. He’s reluctant to give too much away, but is excited about new monitoring and measuring technologies that will “increase by an order of magnitude” the performance data the team will be able to capture and analyse in their Oracle database. “There is a huge amount of innovative talent in our team, and this is an area where we haven’t yet fully indulged our skill sets,” Burns says. “I’m excited about what
we will be able to do next time around.”
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