Flying boats: the major innovation of boating
RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTAL DEVELOPMENT (R&D) COMPRISE CREATIVE AND SYSTEMATIC WORK UNDERTAKEN IN ORDER TO INCREASE KNOWLEDGE.
Stepping out your comfort zone is never easy. It is so much easier to do the same things as everyone else. SEAir operates in such a way as to instil a flexible mindset and nurture collective emulation,
giving its employees the means and freedom to think differently. Sharing ideas and working as a team at SEAir fuels the enquiring mind and the imagination, essential for innovation.
Lifting a boat with ease, minimizing human action and bringing it close to self-stability in complete safety, requires sophisticated systems.
Our daily challenge is to perfect simple, elegant, effective and reliable integrated systems!
Foil adjustment needs to be multidirectional to work in as many boating conditions as possible. Our control system works the appendages managing them simply and effectively.
SEAir has developed a control unit for any type of foil giving it mobility in four directions: vertical up and down, longitudinal forward and aft, left and right rotation, exterior and interior canting.
It would be difficult to envisage foiling confidently without using electronics. SEAir interconnects equipment ranging from ordinary sensors to inertial measurement units, including servo actuators.
Following on from this is the need to produce and store energy, particularly on a sailing yacht, but also for future clean energy motor boats.
3D printing is at the heart of our DNA. We produce highly complex geometrical composite, carbon and, soon, metal parts.
We are very proud to be the first in the world to produce foils for motor boats using a completely automated robotic carbon fibre placement process.
So, we specialized in implementing measurement gauges and optical fibres.
SEAir works on load studies or airborne platform attitudes, thanks to sensors embedded in the foils or positioned on the surface.
The protection of SEAir’s intellectual property is at the heart of its strategy.
In 2019, SEAir is one of the top ten SMEs in France by the number of patents filed.
At SEAir we protect our expertise in three main areas :
- Production processes
- Foil kinematics and their control units
- Integrating foils and other systems on rigid inflatable and rigid boats
Step into the future with Groupe Beneteau’s 1st foiling concept boat. The boating industry’s global leader entrusts the entire foiling system of a powerboat to SEAir. Just over 9 metres and weighing just over 4 metric tons, the foiling powerboat successfully stays airborne. An ambitious R&D programme!
In seeking to lower the manufacturing cost of a pair of foils for our Flying Tender 5.5 and to improve their quality, SEAir succeeds in manufacturing the first motor boat foil, using a robotic automated carbon fibre placement process, after more than a year’s work.
A rigid inflatable boat fitted with adjustable foils remains airborne at 15 knots. Tests show improved stability and superb comfort along with matchless surfing and airborne sensations, not mention a notable decrease in engine speed and therefore noise and a considerable reduction in fuel consumption in the order of 30%. The SEAir Flying Tender is born.
An ocean-going monohull cruiser racer “flies” for the first time. SEAir’s Mini 747 (David Raison plan) is fitted with a multidirectional foiling system and is being used for measurement and development tests. Our 747 lifts up at 8 knots and remains airborne and stable with or without servo control electronics, at speeds established well above 20 knots. The goal is to maintain a monohull evenly airborne, as defined in the 2021 America’s Cup.
The UBS University is at the leading edge of research in composite materials. It works with SEAir on characterizing composite materials and it carries out numerous tests. We also make good use of the ComposiTIC platform and its 3D printers as well as the Coriolis Composites carbon fibre placement robot.
SEAir’s doctoral student works at the Ecole Navale de Brest ‘s IRENAV Laboratory, which has the most recent resources for Fluid-Structure Interaction calculations, which are confirmed by a flow tunnel in which we place our foil models.
Owens Corning has developed a range of technical 3DP filament products under the brand XSTRANDTM , which are formulated using glass filled polymers (30% loading) and optimized for use in fused filament fabrication (FFF) printers. Tested on SEAir foils.