ANSYS Extreme

It is implied that any form of racing incorporates the concept of 'The Extreme' and the Little America's Cup, disputed by C-Class catamarans is no different. In December 2010, the Team Invictus Little America's Cup campaign welcomed ANSYS on board as a technical partner. Since then, Team Invictus have had access to entire ANSYS software suite, which comprises an array of meshing, Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) tools. Dr. Saïf-Deen Akanni who has been working with various ANSYS tools since the 1990s is guiding the aerodynamic and hydrodynamic studies. Tian Ye, Olivia Stodieck, Ricardo Rosario and Anthony Cal maintain the finite element structural analysis effort. Together, they will also delve into Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) studies.

Team Invictus is making use of several meshing, CFD and FEA tools to perform fluid dynamic and structural optimisation of wing sails, hulls and appendages. The access to these different tools means that Team Invictus members can choose the most appropriate meshing, CFD or FEA approach depending on the type of problem. This will allow the design team to extract the maximum performance from the 27.9 Square Metres (300 Square Feet) surface area limit of the sail by designing the strongest and lightest carbon fibre composite structure that their imaginations can produce.

The numerical modelling will be validated by an instrumented sailing programme scheduled to begin in earnest in the Spring of 2012. With the capability that ANSYS provides, all that remains is to get time on the water and to find suitable crew to complement the very capable Paul Larsen and Gordon Kaiser who placed third out of seven entries in the last Little America's Cup competition, held in Newport, Rhode Island in August 2010.

The next Little Americas Cup will be held in the United Kingdom in 2013 and hosted by Team Invictus. A significantly larger fleet of up to 12 boats is expected to dispute Little Americas Cup 2013. The teams will hail from The United Kingdom, The United States, Canada, Australia, The Netherlands, France, Italy and Spain.

Team Invictus are intending to go two positions better and win Little Americas Cup 2013. If they manage that feat, it would be due in no small part to Team ANSYS and the support they are giving to this uniquely British effort.