Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli adopts Siemens Xcelerator as a Service for America’s Cup yacht design

Siemens Digital Industries Software announced today that the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli America's Cup team is using the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of software and services to design, simulate and optimize its racing yacht for the forthcoming America’s Cup challenge (37ᵗʰ America’s Cup).

“The Siemens Xcelerator as a Service portfolio provides critical tools to Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli that allow the team to design, analyze and evaluate all aspects of the boat’s hydraulics and fluid-dynamic performance,” said Matteo Ledri, Head of CFD, Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli Team. “Using Siemens’ software, the hull, foils, rudder and sails can be analyzed as part of the digital twin, to understand how each surface responds to the changes in the project parameters, thus speeding up our work.”

The hull, foils, rudder and sails are designed and analyzed virtually using Simcenter™ STAR CCM+™ software to understand how sails, hull and the complex hydrodynamics of the hydrofoil respond to the changes in the project parameters. Simcenter™ Amesim™ software is used to simulate all on-board hydraulic lines and optimize performance, an essential aspect given that on-board hydraulic power for the aerial parts of the boat is generated by four cyclors using pedal power.

Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli is also taking advantage of Xcelerator Share, the cloud-based collaboration capability in Siemens Xcelerator as a Service, to effectively manage increased design complexity, improve manufacturing repeatability across the growing number of parts undergoing thousands of engineering changes per year, both in and out of racing season. In the highly competitive America’s Cup environment, these advanced shape description capabilities and high-fidelity CFD simulations of an extreme class of sailing boats allow the team to meet their needs on the timetables demanded by global racing competitions.

Siemens Xcelerator as a Service enables a high degree of automation, so the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli team can fully leverage the power of modern high-performance computing (HPC) clusters, running thousands of simulations per day to quickly explore the characteristics of new designs in different environmental conditions. In addition, Siemens provides a dedicated support service to assist the team in extracting the maximum value out of their investment. The agreement also includes Siemens’ NX™ software, which Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli licensed to start evaluating its potential with a view to its future introduction.

“The Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli team’s selection of Siemens Xcelerator as a Service is another proof point that organizations at the bleeding edge of innovation are using our solutions to bring their ideas to life and find new areas for true innovation,” said Franco Megali, Vice President and CEO Italy, Israel and Greece, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “Whether that’s teams competing in the world’s most extreme sailing races, taking new vehicles to the edge of space or building a more sustainable future for us all, pioneers are choosing our solutions.”