Autonomous sailing world record - sail wing design

The aim of this project is to determine the feasibility of a UQ based team attempting to break several world records for an Autonomous Sailing Boat (ASB), of particular interest is the Trans-Tasman crossing. Upon reviewing extensive literature, sail design approaches were found to be over complicated and require years of experience or over simplified and return far from optimal results. Through utilising these design approaches and results and reviewing the findings a simplified approach that provides a sufficiently optimised result was created. This is done through an extensive literature review into the current field of autonomous sail boats, with particular interest into craft design, cost, effectiveness and sail design. A transferable methodology for the wing design process is also provided highlighting design considerations and calculations. These are based off of set or assumed boat parameters including length, weight and capability. Using this methodology and project specific assumptions returned a sail wing design consisting of a NACA0018 profile, with a chord root length of 1.2m, taper ratio of 0.4, aspect ratio of 4.2 and a length of 3.35m. This wing profile under an apparent wind speed of 19m/s was found to have a lift force of 650N. This would require a righting moment of 916Nm, which was deemed to be within a feasible magnitude after reviewing similar craft capabilities