MAY SUM-UP
In May Rafale 3.5 took the plunge! One month left before the competition and, with the summer coming, the team is more than enthusiastic about the competition and finalizing the last details.
🏆 SuMOTH CHALLENGE - FOILING WEEK
- Where ? Malcesine, Garda Lake, Italy
- When ? June 23rd to July 9th
- To learn more:
🖌 DESIGN
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Achievements and Work in progress:
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The design of the hull of Rafale 4 and its internal structure is slowly but surely progressing. The stacking for the flax / Elium composite is being choosed. Also, the design of the mold has begun.
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To enhance the performances of Rafale 4, a review of the hydrofoil system is underway. The current system exhibits several issues, including excessive lift of the rudder wing in relation to the daggerboard wing. The first step towards optimization consists of a preliminary computation to determine the optimal geometric dimensions of the wings, such as surface area, spans, angles of attack, etc. . To validate this computation, simulations are currently being performed using STAR-CCM+ software.
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Future goals:
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Finishing the design of both the mold and the hull (in terms of internal structure) in order to be able to start the manufacturing by the beginning of the autumn.
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For the hydrofoil system, a design study will be done to identify the most suitable solution for the wing-shat connection and the flap-wing connection. Finally, additional simulations will be run to evaluate the hydrofoil system under critical conditions.
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CFD Analysis
Hydrofoil-StarCCM-2
Hydrofoil-StarCCM-2
CFD Analysis
🛠 MANUFACTURING
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Achievements: The fitting of the new wings with the hull has been finished and our partner Voile SANSOUCY has built and delivered the new trampolines. The tests allowed us to notice some leaking problems around the wings on the hull. So, we brought back the boat to our workshop in order to fix it with some resin and silicon sealant. Finally, all the equipment has been packed and the boat shipped to the company wo manages its shipping to Italy.
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Work in progress: The boat left us for Italy the 1st of June. We take this opportunity to tidy up the workshop and get ready for Italy.
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Future goals: No big reparations needed during the competition.
💻 EMBEDDED SYSTEM
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Achievements: The rig tension load sensors have been fully assembled and soldered, including the 3d printed casing. The design of a support piece for the wind meter has been done, the support itself will be manufactured in June. All of the embedded system except for the wind meter has been packed and shipped with the boat at the end of the month.
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Work in progress: The only work left for the electronics team is to finalize some software parts and to make sure the system works properly during the competition.
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Future goals: For the immediate future, all the focus is the competition. But some work has started to plan for next year’s projects.
📞 COMMUNICATION
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Achievements: The technical report has been submitted and will be soon available on our website! It took us long hours of writing in detail our design, methods, learnings, tests and work to share it for the competition but also to ensure a good knowledge transfer for R4. We also received our media supports for the competition (merch and banners) to be more visible and promote our project in Italy.
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Work in progress: The team is working hard on three main fields:
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Ensuring competition logistics: commodities, roles, teambuilding...
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Preparing competition communication: a good technical presentation, update our website and documents, prepare the team
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Keep searching for new sponsors to help us grow and improve.
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Future goals: Have fun in Italy! Find new sponsors, supports, share our passion and, in the end of the summer, expand the rafale family.😊
🧭 NAVIGATION
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Achievements and Work in Progress: As the ambient temperature warms, we were able to carry out some nautical tests at the end of May, only a few days before the boat was due to leave for Italy. Unfortunately, the weather conditions were not constant.
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On the first day, even if the wind was just a little bit too light, the boat worked great, and except for a little crack that appeared on the wand, nothing broke. Despite the little wind, we were still able to validate that R3.5 is fully capable of taking off and flying by placing it on the shoulder of a zodiac. At the end of the first day, we also noticed that the hull was not completely waterproof, and therefore water was seeping into the hull. In anticipation of the 2nd day of testing, we repaired the cracked wand.
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For the second day, the wind was much better, but this time we had problems with the sail cams and the leakage problem wasn’t solved and was worse. In order to be ready to send everything to Italy the following week, we abandoned the third day of testing to be able to try to repair the boat as quickly as possible. We therefore managed to find a solution to the problems with the cams and with the watertightness of the boat, however we were unable to test everything due to a lack of time with the departure of the boat.
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Work in Progress and Future goals: Our next tasks will be to stick the logos of our various sponsors on the sail and the hull, and to test the repairs carried out before departure. Our first days in Italy will be crucial in order to check the state of our boat and its systems in order to validate that everything is working well.
Our main goal for the following weeks will be to fly R3.5, have the best possible performance and more importantly, have fun.
♻ MATERIALS & LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT (LCA)
2022-2023 Summary
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There has been a significant reduction in the use of materials compared with last year, although we have not redone the entire process.
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The notable improvement lies in the greater use of recycled and/or recyclable materials, contributing to a circular approach to the development of the boat.
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Most of the boat still comes from Canada, but there is an inversion between the USA and France for new parts, which has a negative impact on the overall LCA in terms of transport (although not calculated).
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As far as new materials are concerned, the boat production phase remains the main source of emissions, with a slight increase in energy consumption compared with the previous year. However, there is a slight improvement in non-fossil energy emissions (global warming), from -800 in 2022 to -600 in 2023.
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It's important to note that most of the calculations are based on this year's production.
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Unfortunately, the most problematic point concerns the transportation of the boat and crew by air, which generates a significant number of emissions. We therefore recommend that, where possible, we consider shipping the boat by sea for next year, even though this may be complex to implement.
