A Real-Time Simulator of Foiling Catamarans

The new trends in the design of race catamarans has introduced new innovations as huge vertical wings instead of main soft sails, and foiling underwater wings. The scope of the paper is the development of a mathematical model of these new features to be implemented in a simulator designed for training purpose. The paper describes the principal assumptions, the simplifications, and the modeling strategies that were adopted in order to obtain a real time simulation. The mathematical model is implemented in an already existing SIMULINK simulator developed at the University of Southampton and exploits its graphical interfaces. The main new feature is the "flying" simulation. The simulator is designed to interact with the in-training team and to feedback the crewmen with realistic cues. Beside training purpose, the simulator could also be a useful tool in comparing different race strategies in order to select the most promising one.