Deformability and buckling load of yacht hulls with fiber reinforced plastic sandwich structure depend on the stack sequence of the skins. In this work an optimization of fiber directions of the laminae for a racing yacht is proposed. This procedure has been divided into three parts (i.e. material characterization, surface model definition, lay-up optimization). First of all a set of unidirectional specimens has been realized, by using the same fibers and matrix (carbon/epoxy) used for the hull as well as the same procedure and workers, in order to characterize the material according to American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Standard D3039, employing strain gage technique. In the second part, by means of an original software in Turbo-Pascal (which uses the half-width value matrix as an input) linked to Pro/ENGINEER, it has been possible to obtain the body plan and surface and finite element (FE) models of the sailing yacht for the subsequent analyses. In the third step, an optimization procedure that uses the results of FE structural analyses in three different sailing configurations is performed, with the aim of obtaining the fiber directions that are able to minimize the yacht deformability, also taking into account the buckling loads. An approximate analytical model has been used in conjunction with a sweep technique in order to evaluate the best of the solutions. q 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
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