Flying Shape Sails Analysis by Radial Basis Functions Mesh Morphing

High fidelity calculation tools are well established in the nautical design sector where advanced numerical simulations are adopted for the prediction of the interaction of boat parts with surrounding fluids. The capability to couple such tools with efficient shape parametrization procedures offers the possibility to further improve the performance speeding up the design process. Radial Basis Functions (RBF) Mesh Morphing (MM) allows to quickly modify the shape within numerical domains without the need of updating the underlying CAD representation. The validity of this approach, widely adopted in aeronautical and automotive fields, is demonstrated in this paper by applying the method to the analysis of the flying shape of a symmetric spinnaker also investigating the importance of panel arrangement on sail characteristics. The performance, in terms of drive and side forces, is evaluated for different morphed geometries by RANS (Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes) analyses. The RBF setup proved to be efficient and robust in generating a good quality of the morphed domain within the full range of amplification from the undeformed to the flying shape geometry.