Technological Inputs

One of the most innovative aspects of the Safran project is the extensive involvement of the Group’s engineers, giving the boat the benefits of technologies transferred from cutting-edge aerospace and defense applications. Below we highlight some of the contributions from Group companies.

More than 180 engineers from the Group companies were involved in every stage of the boat’s construction, contributing their expertise in a wide range of high-tech fields including composite materials, modeling, hydraulic engineering and onboard electronics. Our engineers established a close working relationship with the naval architects, Marc and his team, shipyard, project manager and specialized engineers.

© Safran

Safran’s technological contributions

Rudders
To avoid delamination, Safran’s rudders are made of carbon fibers woven in three dimensions, a technology derived from the Group’s aerospace research, which will be applied on the next generation of commercial jet engines. The rudders of a sailboat, crucial to controlling the craft, are often subjected to severe shocks in collisions with UFOs (unidentified floating objects) or sea creatures. Even with systems for automatically retracting a rudder on contact, this can still result in major damage, with delamination that may lead to breakage of the whole part. With the 3D woven carbon fiber technology, instead of being laid on top of each other in successive layers, are first interwoven on Jacquard looms (like those used in the textile industry) before being applied to the rudder main beam and the leading and trailing edges. The advantage of this procedure is much greater resistance to shock and virtually no delamination after impact

Hull Experts in composite bonding for space applications carried out traction and delamination tests of samples of the composite materials used on the hull to analyze their behavior and identify their mechanical characteristics. The data generated by these tests was used to adapt the material’s structure for each part of the hull, thus shaving about 10% off the weight in relation to conventional construction.

Hull
Experts in composite bonding for space applications carried out traction and delamination tests of samples of the composite materials used on the hull to analyze their behavior and identify their mechanical characteristics. The data generated by these tests was used to adapt the material’s structure for each part of the hull, thus shaving about 10% off the weight in relation to conventional construction.

Technical documents
Following the trend in technical documents used by airlines for engine maintenance, Safran uses an electronic database with key information on the boat. In case of an incident or failure, the skipper and shore team can quickly find the information needed to resolve the problem, without the risk of error or misunderstanding.

Modeling
The Group’s engineers also worked with the naval architects, contributing their expertise in modeling and computation. In particular, they performed the keel stress and vibration calculations, as well as structural calculations for various appendages.

Hydraulic keel canting system
The Group’s specialists in hydraulic systems for landing gear shared their knowledge and expertise with the Italian company Cariboni, responsible for producing the keel canting system. Our engineers also took part in the system tests on the company’s test rig in Milan.

Materials
The Safran group supplied various aerospace alloys (titanium, stainless steel and Inconel) to make components in the hydraulic keel system, including the keel-hull fastener, actuators, bearings, etc.

“The expertise of engineers from Group companies helped us enhance the boat’s design.” Marc Guillemot