When North Sails released their video on design, starring Michael Richelsen above, I thought it was a bit over the top. But then again, it’s hard to explain how much time, effort and money that goes in to all those tools.

Being both an avid sailor and an engineer (M.Sc. Computer Science) I want to dig deeper to really understand what’s going on. When North introduced 3Di, I went to Nevada to try to explain why this could be the biggest thing in sailmaking since 3DL. Al major websites republished the article and it even ended up on Norths owns sites as “3Di Explained”.

With the big projects like America’s Cup, Volvo Ocean Race and MedCup, sailmaking have gone from being an art to much more of a science. And if there’s one person who really understands this development it’s Michael Richelsen, the man behind much of the North Sails Design Suite (NDS).

Michael studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Denmark, and wrote his master thesis on sails and aerodynamics, before joining North Sails in 1979. He’s one of the leading experts on CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and he’s been involved in America’s Cup projects since 1983 and he managed the performance prediction group for Alinghi in the last Cup:

What makes this boat so different to, say, a keelboat is that windage is much, much bigger. Windage goes up by speed squared, so when you think that this boat is capable of travelling three or four times faster than a Version 5 boat, you can see the importance of windage. With the keelboats, wave drag was the biggest element of drag, where at a certain speed the boat ran into this wall of resistance. There is no such wall with this kind of boat; that aspect is not there. Aerodynamic drag is a much greater factor, and you could say that what’s going on above the water is much more important than what’s going on below the water this time.

North Design Suite. There’s many pieces to a complex puzzle. We all know how everything interact in the real world, and it doesn’t become any easier trying to do it in software.

What’s happening right now?
Following Alinghi loosing the AC33 I returned to my full time job at North Sails. Having been on reduced time for quite a while, the North designers had accumulated a fairly long wish list of desired upgrades to the North design suite of software. The development of the software falls in my department – fortunately we now have a couple of great guys helping out on this. High on the list was accurate dynamic modeling, i.e. upgrade the current static coupling between Flow and MemBrain to account for external variations in time due to wind and/or sea state. Collectively we decided to attack this first, but part way through the development the wing for the next AC34 entered the scene.

We decided to shelf the dynamic work for the time being and instead focus on adding a wing model to Flow and MemBrain. Early on in this phase, North Technology Group, was contracted by ACRM to design the AC34 wing offered in their Shared Design Package.

So the wing development combined with joining our small ACRM/SDP team has kept me busy!

What’s you sailing background?
I started sailing with my dad and then joined the junior program in a local sailing club. Grew up in the classic “juniorbåd” followed by Yngling, then started sailing Trapeze dinghy and 470. Also sailed in various Danish and Scandinavian one design keel boats, after I finished school and began my studies.

How did you end up at North Sails and in CFD?
I studied Solid Mechanics at the Technical University in Denmark with an emphasis on applied mathematics, including Fluid Mechanics. For my M.Sc. I chose to create an aero-elastic model for a sail. As I did not have access to aerodynamic data, I wrote to North Sails San Diego (back then the Mecca of North) to inquire whether they would be interested in collaborating for my thesis work. Lowell North invited me to come to San Diego and then go down to NZ to work with Tom Schnackenburg for half a year, who became a kind of mentor for me. That was the beginning of it. 

I went back to Denmark to finish my M.Sc. Following that in order to continue my work with North, the company offered to sponsor my Ph.D. on further aero-elastic development. Our structural MemBrain model originates in this work.