I'm new to this forum so please move this thread if it is in the wrong spot.
I am a student studying a masters in Civil & Structural Engineering at the university of leeds. For my final years dissertation i chose to do some computational fluid modelling of the aerodynamics of sails. A part of this involves creating a virtual wind tunnel, and blowing air through a 2d cross section of a sail (in plan view).
I am a laser sailor, race regularly but not excessively and finish usually in the 2/3 of the fleet at club racing, so I know how things work reasonably well.
To create the 2d sail geometry I use a program called Gambit.
To run the virtual wind tunnel, I will use a piece of software called Fluent (v popular with the Americas Cup)
The Java applet can create aerofoil profiles depending on thickness (set it to zero), skew, camber etc (as you can see on the site). I want to model a laser sail through close hauled, beam reach and broad reach points of sailing. For close hauled I know we need cunningham on, outhaul tight, kicker/vang tight to depower - the sail needs to act as a foil to prevent stalling. Vice versa for downwind.
For each point I think I have the correct sail shape in plan view.
Here's my attempt:
Close Hauled
Maximum camber (0-9):3
Max camber pos. (0-9): 2
Thickness (0-99): 0
Point size: 4
Beam Reach
Broad Reach
Am I correct? Using the link, what do you think the three points should be set at? Use the sliders to change the aerofoil's shape - make thickness zero (negligable) and ignore the sliders below "# Points".