Altair Becomes Official Supplier for Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli Team, Enhancing AC75 Performance

Photo Credit: Altair

Altair Engineering (Troy, Mich., U.S.) announced on Oct. 27 an agreement with Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, one of the challengers in the PRADA Cup and the 36^th America’s Cup yacht race presented by Prada. Under this agreement, Altair is named an official supplier for the team and will provide the engineering team of the sailing boat, AC75 Luna Rossa, with simulation software and engineering services. These services also include work to optimize composites. 

According to Altair, its simulation solutions have been applied to design, develop and optimize most of the boat’s components, and used to study the structural side of fluid structure interaction (FSI). With this type of analysis, says the company, the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli engineers have investigated the response of the boat’s overall structural model to its impact with water, obtaining important information on how the composite structures of the hull, deck and interior would react under dynamic conditions. The engineers also evaluated the shape of the components immersed in water under load, taking into account the orthotropic elastic properties of composites and connecting structures. Finally, the team applied topology optimization on many metal components to fully exploit the design flexibility provided by additive manufacturing. These optimizations resulted in organic structures with optimal material distribution at maximum stiffness. The AC75 boat concept can be seen in the video below. 

“Altair provides one of the most advanced and efficient composite design platforms on the market,” says Alessandro Franceschetti, head of Structural Engineering of the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli team. “The optimization of composite structures with Altair OptiStruct has allowed us to automate the ply-by-ply structural sizing processes of all primary structures of the boat, reaching an unmatched level of detail. This systematic and detailed approach to composite optimization has opened the door to a radical approach in the construction of components in the yard. It has also resulted in significant weight savings with the same structural efficiency while also improving the weight distribution of the boat.”

Pietro Cervellera, Altair’s senior vice president of EMEA adds that it is proud to support the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli team, and wishes them the best of luck.