2 ms·
This seems really awesome. Just out of curiosity, why not take advantage of the stacking nature of containers to make the wing sheath 1xN? It seems like having
by BWStearns 4y ago
This seems really awesome. Just out of curiosity, why not take advantage of the stacking nature of containers to make the wing sheath 1xN? It seems like having a deeper sheath you could get more flexibility in wing construction just by virtue of more room. Also, to echo @roter: how does the stack below the sail container handle the extra force from the sail? Are there extra stays from the bottom of the sail container to the deck/gunwales to keep it from toppling the stack?
- jmoorebeek 4y agoI like the deeper sheath idea, but we moved away from that early on for a few reasons. A major one is cargo-handling, because you rapidly hit limits on how high the cranes can lift containers away from the deck. They can't start moving sideways until the entire container is free and clear, and if your container is too tall you may not even clear the stack before the crane reaches its upper limit. From a load management perspective, if you have the choice to go taller or wider, it's generally better to go wider. This also plays into the idea of using tape-spring rollers to store the sail material - it lends itself to being wider, rather than narrower. You can look in a few of our other comments below for more of a description, but yes, we plan to have load spreaders to reduce the compression load on any one stack, and tethers deployed to the main deck to provide additional tension restraints.