Design and engineering
Doyle Design
The Doyle design office is the innovator behind Cableless and Structured Luff technology, and where the limits of sailmaking are constantly tested. Our design software and tools are among the most advanced 3D modelling and airflow technology available anywhere.
The team
Highly qualified sailors, each with different strengths.
Our central design team is drawn from a worldwide pool of veteran sailors. They are the people your sails are designed by, and in most cases the people who will sail them.
Design Director
Grand Prix Design
Grand Prix Design
Grand Prix Design
Senior Designer
And seven more designers
“The design team led by Richard Bouzaid put in a huge effort. If you want something different, something fast or an edge, it is best not to follow the crowd.”
Alex Thomson, HUGO BOSS
Global design network
Twenty years of winning campaigns.
Richard Bouzaid leads innovation and research for the design department. With more than twenty years of sailing experience, he has been involved in winning campaigns for the America’s Cup, the Volvo Ocean Race, the Vendée Globe and numerous Grand Prix projects.
Every yacht has its own set of characteristics, so our designers draw on a worldwide pool of veteran sailors and design technology, exclusive Doyle fabrics, proprietary sail design software and wind tunnel testing. That is why our sails hold their shape across the wind range.
Engineered solutions
The hard problems come to us.
Having solved some of the most challenging Superyacht projects and high performance Grand Prix sails, our engineers are accustomed to creating construction methods, sail handling systems, battens and batten systems, and head, tack and clew attachments that did not exist before the project asked for them.
Doyle solutions are highly engineered, and elegant with it.
Superyacht sailsDoyle CFD
We model the boat before we build the sail.
Doyle CFD was founded in 2011 to develop the computational tools and techniques that came out of Stanford University, NASA and Doyle Sails. High resolution simulation gives our designers the data a wind tunnel and a tow tank would, and a good deal more besides. We were one of the early adopters of this kind of in-depth sail study, and it now plays a major role in the design of every Doyle Superyacht sail.
A CFD analysis starts with a geometric model of the mast, boom, hull, deck and sails, and tells us how air and water move around the boat and where the pressure and skin friction sit. An FEA model defines the structural properties of the rig and predicts stress and deformation, so we know how strong each part needs to be.
Run the two together as a Fluid Structure Interaction model and we can predict the flying shape itself. The solver calculates the aerodynamic forces, applies them, lets the sail deform, then recalculates against the new shape, looping until the answer settles.
Designers then read the strain maps. Highly loaded regions are reinforced with additional fibre, and individual yarn strains show where the load travels, so the layout can be built to control the shape. The sail is tested through its full range of use before anything is cut.
Doyle innovation
CFD and FEA studies on two of the world’s largest sailing yachts, M5 and Sailing Yacht A. Top, aerodynamic and hydrodynamic post-processing from a CFD based VPP study of M5 sail options. Middle, fibre layouts from Sailing Yacht A’s mainsail, and stress plots from analysing the sail and rig. Bottom, a typical Superyacht sail plan, and M5 sailing.
Grand Prix racing
Pushing boundaries and winning all over the world.
From foiling Moths through to the most high profile Super Maxis. One of our biggest strengths in Grand Prix has been a team of experienced sailors who see a project through from concept to competition, and who are sailing at that level themselves.
Grand Prix sailsPut the team on your boat.
Tell us about your yacht and what you want from it. The people who design the sail are the people you will talk to.
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