THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

A team of French scientists has developed a tear drop-shaped catamaran that gets more efficient the faster it goes. Could this be the future of fast boats?

If you thought the current trend for foiling boats resulted in some strange looking craft you ain’t seen nothing yet. A specialist shipyard in La Rochelle, France has started building a range of wing-shaped catamarans that rely on aerodynamics rather than hydrodynamics to help them ‘fly’ over the water. Known as Advanced Aerodynamic Vessels, or A2Vs, they are capable of speeds up to 50 knots while also halving the fuel consumption of a typical craft of this size and pace.

They work by taking advantage of an aerodynamic phenomenon known as wing-inground effect. Conventional plane wings are shaped in such a way that as they pass through the air they generate low pressure on the top side and high pressure on the underside. The combined effect is lift. The closer the wing is to the ground, or in this case the surface of the sea, the more efficient it becomes as the high-pressure air is sandwiched between two surfaces. This is even more effective in the case of a catamaran as the hulls prevent the high-pressure air escaping from the side as well, creating more lift relative to speed.