AC75 foil arm testing successfully carried out at Persico Marine

The second round of structural testing of the one design AC75 foil arms has successfully been conducted at Persico Marine in Italy last month.

Comprehensive tests were undertaken over the course of three days, with more than 100 different load cycles applied to the foil arm, and were the final step in the foil arm design and construction process which has been led by Luna Rossa Challenge. The focus can now turn towards completing the production of the foil arms before they are distributed to the teams, in preparation for the respective launches of their AC75s in the coming months.

The satisfactory result follows on from the first round of one design foil arm testing undertaken at Persico in September 2018, after which a working group with representatives of structural engineering from all of the teams collaboratively redefined the design and build process for the one design foil arms for the AC75s.

The joint effort was led by Alessandro Franceschetti, Head of Structures for Luna Rossa Challenge together with New Zealand based composite engineering consultancy Pure Design and Stefano Beltrando of Qi Composites who managed the quality control process.

During the testing, the one design foil arms were subjected to loads well in excess of twice those that are anticipated to be reached during intense AC75 racing.

“The one design foil arm is one of the primary structural components of the AC75. Today we achieved a great milestone towards the 36th America’s Cup. This was a full-scale testing program, a 1:1 scale foil arm prototype was tested under specific critical load-cases to mimic and analyse its structural behaviour under extreme conditions, such as high asymmetric loading and grounding scenarios. For the first time in America’s Cup design programme history, a fully instrumented one design primary component has been tested to its full load carrying capacity until breakage. Today, we reached our targets and achieved all of our objectives, it was a synergic effort among all the teams,” said Alessandro Franceschetti.

Representatives from the Challengers, the Defender Emirates Team New Zealand and relevant stakeholders were present at Persico for this important milestone.

Read the full article on www.americascup.com.