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Leonardo Times JUNE 2013O
ne of the greatest experiences of join-ing a DREAMteam is the cooperation of multiple studies and disciplines that exist within the TU Delft. The Solar Boat Team is one of those teams making this experience possible, making an extremely advanced machine that is fully designed by students.HISTORY OF THE DELTA LLOYD SOLAR BOAT TEAM
As mentioned before, the team builds a new boat every two years since 2006. However, in 2005 a first set-up for the Delft Solar Boat Team was initiated by Professor Tom van Terwisga at the Faculty of Mari-time Engineering. This was the very first time that the race was organized and it served as a pilot project to investigate the future possibilities of a Wold Cup for solar-powered boats. This pilot project ended up being a great success and in 2006, the first official race was organized. The team from the TU Delft designed and built a new boat within a year and were able to
finish first, ending up ten hours before the second place in the overall ranking. In 2008, the organization of the race was able to attract more teams, although none of them were able to beat us. This meant that the Delta Lloyd Solar Boat Team, again using a completely new boat, ended up first for the second time in a row. The difference with the competition was much smaller than in 2006, so the team decided to start work on a new in-novation from 2010 onwards: hydrofoils. The team started this innovation, which essentially entails sailing on wings that lift the hull out of the water, due to the great possibilities in optimizing the resis-tance of the boat. Working with this new technique, the team experienced some setbacks in the production, which in turn led to a very short period of time available for testing the boat. This lack of testing time caused a lot of time loss in the first few days of the race. The final days were a great success and the possibilities of the hydrofoils were confirmed by a top speed
of 36km/h (compared to 25km/h without the use of hydrofoils). In 2010, the team ended up third in the overall ranking. In 2012, the team decided to continue working with hydrofoils, due to the great possibilities proven the race before. Due to some setbacks that had to be endured, the team ended up fifth in the overall ranking, but was able to incorporate a lot of improvements in the design. The design of this particular boat will be dis-cussed in some more detail in the next section.
SPECIAL FUTURES OF THE 2012 SOLAR BOAT
Some interesting futures of the 2012 Delta Lloyd Solar Boat will be discussed in this section, with a focus on the relevance to aerospace engineering. For additional information, the website www.solarboat-team.nl is available, or the team can be contacted via mail: info@solarboatteam. nl.
Sailing 30km/h with a solar-powered boat, using hydrofoils
Every two years since 2006, the Delta Lloyd Solar Boat Team builds a boat to participate
in the World Cup for solar-powered boats, across the ‘Elfsteden-route’, the famous
tour of the eleven cities in the Dutch province of Friesland. The upcoming year the
team, consisting of a new group of students, will start designing and building the
2014 Solar Boat.
TEXT Martijn Tra, BSc Aerospace Engineering, Team member Delta Lloyd Solar Boat Team
DELTA LLOYD SOLAR BOAT TEAM
JUNE 2013 Leonardo Times
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General
The Delta Lloyd Solar Boat Team is respon-sible for organizing everything related to building the boat and sailing the race. This includes matters such as taking care of the fi nancial situation of the team, maintain-ing contact with the sponsors and the production of all the diff erent parts of the boat.
Variety of students
One of the special non-technical features of the 2012 Delta Lloyd Solar Boat Team was the variety of students participating: eight students from six diff erent studies, including three aerospace engineering students. This great variety makes it very interesting to participate in a team like this and combine all the diff erent disci-plines.
Hydrofoils
The hydrodynamic design of the hydro-foils shows a great similarity with de-signing wings for airplanes. Due to the background knowledge gathered during the fi rst two years of the bachelor, this is a perfect job for aerospace engineering students. The focus for this design was im-proving on the stability properties of the hydrofoil design of 2010. The result of half a year of designing by two students can be seen in Figure 1.
Structures calculations
There are two main components that re-quire calculations on the structural loads: the hull and the hydrofoils. Both are pro-duced using composites to achieve mini-mum weight.
When the hydrodynamic design of the hull was completed, one of our aerospace engineers performed calculations on the loading of the hull. The hydrofoil design required some more cooperation be-tween the hydrodynamic design and the possible construction to search for the limits in loading the foils.
Use of composites
In order to obtain a lightweight boat, the use of composites is very important. Us-ing composites a high structural loadUs-ing per weight can be achieved for the hull
as well as the hydrofoils. The hull is con-structed using a sandwich construction: one layer of composite, a core of foam, followed by another layer of composites. The boat was produced using wet hand lay-up and the weight of the hull ended up being 47kg.
The second main component produced of composites is the hydrofoils. These are produced using prepreg composites. An upper and lower skin are glued together with a core of foam in between.
INTERESTED?
From September onwards, the team will start developing the boat for the race in the summer of 2014. Are you interested in the project? Are you considering join-ing the team? Please contact us via info@ solarboatteam.nl.
Figure 1. Render of the 2012 Delta Lloyd Solar Boat Team
Table 1. Technical details
Weight: 155kg (excl. driver)
Length: 5.93m
Width: 1.8m
Solar deck: 7.92m2 GaAs solar cells
Max power solar cells: 1.75kWh
Weight of battery cells: 7.1kg
Max capacity of battery: 1.7kWh
Max motor power: 4kW
