Posts Tagged ‘Tyler Doyle’

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick met with Robbie and Tyler Doyle along with ScaleTera’s CEO Bob Houvener to discuss Doyle Sailmakers’ design and optimization of water turbines to capture and convert the power of ocean currents.

Salem Sailmaker is Working to Turn Ocean Currents into Electric Ones

By Ethan Forman, Staff Writer for The Salem News

Photos: Mark Lorenz

SALEM — Doyle Sailmakers, a local company with an international reach, may be on the verge of turning ocean currents into electric currents, Gov. Deval Patrick learned on a visit to the Salem sail loft yesterday afternoon.

Doyle is working with a New Hampshire company to fashion an efficient underwater turbine to harness steady, underwater currents for power. The design of the turbine’s blades relies on Doyle’s deep understanding of how sails power boats.

The potential for a sailmaker to help bolster the state’s green economy and jobs was not lost on Patrick.

“What I learned today is there are some very, very intriguing new technologies being developed here,” Patrick said.

Patrick, Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll and state Rep. John Keenan, D-Salem, and their respective entourages visited Doyle’s headquarters in a new industrial park on Swampscott Road.

Doyle Sailmakers started in August 1982 in Marblehead at a time when there were 10 or 12 sailmakers in town, owner Robbie Doyle said. Several years ago, it moved to Salem, where it employs 35 people locally, down two or three from a few years ago.

In addition, there are 70 Doyle sail lofts around the world, and the company not only makes and services sails for local day sailors, its sails propel some of the world’s largest and most expensive super yachts.

The sailmaker’s motto, “Better Engineered Sails,” may take on a whole new meaning if the company can create efficient underwater power turbines.

The governor and officials toured the cavernous sail loft yesterday, gingerly stepping on slick floors as workers knelt to work on sails spread around the 32,000-square-foot facility.

“I have never had so many blue blazers in my facility at once,” said Doyle’s wife, Janet.

While Patrick liked what he saw, he did not come bearing state help right away.

“I don’t know yet what we can do, but one of the conversations we were having is what their needs are to help them get to the next stage,” Patrick said.

The state has, through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, some resources the state can tap to invest in green technologies, Patrick said.

Massachusetts is one of 10 states that sell power plant emission allowances through auctions and invest the proceeds in energy-efficient and renewable energy projects, according to RGGI’s website.

“Doyle grew and expanded and helped … embrace that technology because of a city investment and a state investment to actually put them here,” Driscoll said. “They used to be in Marblehead, a much smaller company, a much smaller footprint. Now they are here, building sails, building airships, talking about other innovation.”

Driscoll pointed out the building that houses the sail loft used to house Maynard Plastics. Several years ago, the facility was sold and carved into industrial condominiums.

“Now it’s 10 different companies,” many of which focus on innovation, Driscoll said. Driscoll met with Doyle a week ago, and, after she did so, she decided to take Patrick out to see what they were working on.

“You could see they are not designing it as a renewable energy product,” Driscoll said. “They are designing it as an economic way to deliver electricity that happens to have a lot of renewable benefits.”

So how did a sail company come to design an underwater power turbine?

Part of the reason, Doyle said, is the company takes an engineering approach to sail making. Doyle studied applied physics at Harvard University, and Doyle’s son, Tyler, is the company’s chief engineer.

About a year ago, Robert Houvener, president and founder of ScaleTera Renewable Energy LLC of Hollis, N.H., approached Doyle to create a new, more efficient water turbine using sail material.

The idea was to build big blades out of sail fabric that might withstand ocean currents.

“It turned out it was not cost-effective,” Robbie Doyle said. But Doyle kept on working on the project.

“I loved everything I saw,” Tyler said. “I had been working on wind turbines for the year or two before that.” Tyler had been put off by the wind turbine’s enormous cost for not a lot of power.

“The second you looked at the economics of this project, it just made so much more sense,” Tyler said.

Turbines helped mills power the industrial revolution by harnessing power from swift-flowing rivers. However, traditional water turbines require high-speed currents of 8 to 10 knots and building structures that can stand up to that type of force, making them too expensive to build.

Doyle’s technology requires slower but steady currents of about 3 knots. The turbines can be assembled in standard shipyards and don’t rely on special, and expensive, ships and facilities.

The goal is to someday harness the currents of the Gulf Stream, the swift Atlantic Ocean currents off the East Coast or the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey.

“We had never built a propeller blade in our life,” Robbie Doyle said, “but, again, it’s just like a twisted sail, it’s no different.”

If all goes according to plan, Robbie Doyle said it could be a billion dollars-plus business in six years.

“We just have to come up with a technology, which we’ve done,” Doyle said. “Now we just have to build it.”

Staff writer Ethan Forman can be reached at 978-338-2673 or by e-mail at eforman@salemnews.com.

Integrating High Performance Parallel Computing (HPC) with state-of-the art Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Structural Mechanics (FEA) software from industry leader ANSYS Doyle Sailmakers has recently begun utilizing a high resolution, fully coupled computational simulation environment designed specifically to answer real world sailing challenges.

The complex turbulent flow around sails, rigs, and hulls is calculated to solve for millions of data points in the flow surrounding the sails. The detailed stress distribution and deformation that results in the sails and rigs from the forces imposed by the flow is then calculated using a Structural Solver with a composites pre-processor to accurately model the complex overlapping fiber and panel layouts in modern sails.

As Jud Smith says: “I love the flow graphics, I don’t understand the process, but the results in improved sail performance are undeniable.”

Flow Visualization From Star CFD Upwind Simulation (AWA=22, AWS=15 kts)

To learn more about Doyle Star sails, click here.

To learn how the DOYLE Engineering Department optimized the sail shape for a boat 88 meters in overall length, with a mast height of 53 meters off the water and maximum yard length of 22 meters, read Tyler Doyle, DOYLE’s head engineer, coauthored paper, Optimization of Yard Sectional Shape and Configuration for a Modern Clipper Ship.

On a recent trip to Dubai from a chase boat, I watched 80 Dhows race along the coast of Dubai. The race organized by the Dubai Offshore Sailing Club began at the World Islands and finished at the Burj Al Arab. Each Dhow carried between 15 and 20 people aboard. The Dhows are made from teak with carbon fibre spars and masts and are very light. The 60 foot Dhows weigh only 1-3 tons. Water ballast and sand bag ballast are used to ballast the powerful boats. Doyle had sails on two boats in the race. Ahmed Almehairi (#47) used one of our mainsails to achieve an 8th place finish while Mohammed Khalfan (#22) used one of our aft mast sails and finished just under 20th place out of 90. Unlike most sailboat races starts, Dhows wait for a signal before hoisting the huge booms that hold the sails.

Most of the pictures are taken from a chase boat during the race but some are from the practice day on board Mohammed Khalfan’s #22.

Coverage of the race by Multimedia – The National Newspaper

Dhow Photo Gallery

On June 7^th, 2006 Maltese Falcon successfully completed her first sail trial. At 289 feet long, a displacement of 1,240 tons, and draft of 19.7 feet, the Ken Freivokh-designed Maltese Falcon is the largest private sailing yacht in the world. With her three 191-foot tall rotating masts and 25,791 square feet of sail area, the Maltese Falcon is a truly revolutionary yacht built by Perini Navi. Based on the DynaRig square rig concept, developed with Gerry Dijkstra & Partners of Holland, each mast carries five separate push button-controlled, internally furled square sails engineered by DOYLE Sailmakers.

To view more photos from the sail trials of the Maltese Falcon,click here.

“The Maltese Falcon has written a new page in the history of yachting, the DynaRig is no longer an experimental concept” is Tom Perkins’, the owner, first comment to this stunning success. “Everything worked as engineered and the yacht achieved some remarkable numbers: hard on wind in 15.8 knots true, at 38 degrees relative wind angle. we sailed with no fuss or strain at 10.5 knots. On a close reach at 60 degrees relative angle, the speed (still at knots 16 true wind) climbed to 14 knots. The balance is, essentially, perfect–with weather helm never exceeding 0.6 degrees on the wind, or 2.5 degrees on a fast reach. The angle of heel was around 15 degrees, but in a puff, once touched 20 degrees. The leeway angle was well under 5 degrees (without the dagger-board in place). Since it was our first day out, and we wanted to be careful, these results were achieved with the topgallants and the royals furled–so we expect even better numbers in further tests. The maximum loading on the masts never exceeded 50% of our (very, very conservative) limit, so we have plenty of room for some even better results.

“There were no untoward effects from the revolutionary rig. The automatic tacking worked smoothly in all wind strengths–tacking takes only 1.5 minutes, and curiously, she tacks quite readily in light winds, perhaps even easier than in heavier air, (because the wind force against the rigs, when backed, increases with the square of the wind velocity). Jibing is almost trivial and, to a passenger, virtually undetectable.”

To learn how the DOYLE Engineering Department optimized the sail shape for a boat 88 meters in overall length, with a mast height of 53 meters off the water and maximum yard length of 22 meters, read Tyler Doyle, DOYLE’s head engineer, coauthored paper, Optimization of Yard Sectional Shape and Configuration for a Modern Clipper Ship.

For more information on the Maltese Falcon, visit www.symaltesefalcon.com.

MALTESE FALCON LINKS
YouTube – The Greatest Sailboat Ever – Maltese Falcon
YouTube – The Boaters TV 2 – Sailing Yacht The Maltese Falcon
YouTube – Superyacht Cup Antigua 2006
Superyacht Sets Sail – CNET July 14, 2006
Sailing Yacht ‘Maltese Falcon’ – Luxury Perini Navy Yacht Charter
Perini Navi “Maltese Falcon”
UK Company Engineer Rig for $100 Million Superyacht
Venture Capitalist Tom Perkins ’53 Launches a Superyacht – and a Novel
More photos of the Maltese Falcon