This year's America's Cup will be remembered for Oracle Team USA's jaw-dropping comeback against the Emirates New Zealand boat (shown above), but it should also be remembered for the huge role computers have come to play in the competition.
The teams raced 72-foot twin-hull catamarans that are so fragile and finely tuned that they have more in common with Formula One race cars than traditional sailboats. They made this competition on the blustery San Francisco Bay both exciting to watch and dangerous for those taking part.
Long before the boats hit the water, the teams used powerful computers to model small changes in their design and extract maximum performance. It's hard to overestimate the role computer-aided design tools have come to play.
All on the computer
Nick Holroyd, technical director for Emirates Team New Zealand, has been doing America's Cup races for 18 years. In that time, he said in a recent interview, New Zealand has gone from "almost 100 percent physical testing," where design changes were tested in wind tunnels and water tanks, to this year's competition, which was "the first where we've done basically everything using computer simulation."
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