COSMOS provides smooth sailing for Team Dennis Conner designers

Company Team Dennis Conner Industry Marine Location U.S.A. Product Used COSMOSM™ Type of Analysis Linear Static More Details

The Challenge
It's not easy to win the America's Cup. It's not even easy to design a yacht that can win.

In 1992, teams from eight countries tried to capture the oldest and most coveted sailing trophy. Trying to defend the Cup, Team Dennis Conner used the most advanced technology available to design their entrant.

For two years Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) provided Team Dennis Conner with engineering services through their branch engineering office in San Diego, California. NNS, established in 1886, today is the leading government contractor for nuclear submarine and aircraft carrier design and construction. They used their expertise in composite materials and structural design and analysis to help design Stars & Stripes, Team Dennis Conner's entry in the 1992 America's Cup.

The Solution
Personnel at NNS performed their analyses with COSMOSM. For the 1992 trials of Stars & Stripes , the shipbuilders analyzed a variety of hull configurations to identify the best one, without prototyping. They conducted stress and structural integrity analysis with three types of loads -- mass loads, localized loads and water pressure -- on each of the proposed configurations.

COSMOSM's simple graphical interface reduced the iteration time and precluded a long and arduous design and analysis process. David Dillon, a structural analysis engineer who worked on the project at NNS, sums up his experience: "Once we had the baseline model up and running, the turn-around time on design changes was very short. As soon as the principal designers put a design change on paper, we could modify the model and conduct the analysis. Many times we were able to provide results on the same day."

Stars and Stripes carried Dennis Conner to the finals of the 1992 Defender Series in San Diego. She was used by Team Dennis Conner for the 1995 trials. She was later purchased by the US Virgin Islands America's Cup Challenge. The VIACC became Team Caribbean and then merged with Team Dennis Conner.

Summary and Metrics:

• The model, constructed of composite shell, solid, and beam elements, had over 35,000 degrees of freedom
• Reduced costs in prototyping
• Simple graphical interface reduced the iteration time and precluded a long and arduous design and analysis process