Bruce Foil - Theory

Theory

Nearly all methods that increase resistance to sideways movement also cause heeling, the leaning produced by the imbalance of the forces on the sails, high above the waterline, and the sideways resistance, generated by the centerboard or other foil below the waterline. The resulting torque causes the hull to heel until the buoyancy of the hull provides sufficient torque to balance the heeling force. The limited buoyancy of the hull therefore limits the amount of force that the sail can effectively produce.

One solution to dealing with this limit is to bring the forces generated by the sail and the underwater foil into alignment, canceling as much of the torque as possible and thus reducing the amount of heeling. Two approaches to this have surfaced one being the inclined rig, and the other the Bruce foil.

Read more about this topic:  Bruce Foil

Famous quotes containing the word theory:

    Don’t confuse hypothesis and theory. The former is a possible explanation; the latter, the correct one. The establishment of theory is the very purpose of science.
    Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)

    The theory seems to be that so long as a man is a failure he is one of God’s chillun, but that as soon as he has any luck he owes it to the Devil.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)

    There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case.
    Albert Einstein (1879–1955)