Change the way you think about windsurfing

Using 3D software (Blender) this video will explain the physics behind windsurfing. This will cover the following:
1. Does the wind push or pull the sail?
2. What is the sail angle which provides the greatest lift force

It goes over Bernoulli's theorem and Newton's Laws of motion and how they relate to sailing and flight.

[Nico_GER]

This is so good! Thanks for your work.

[rokowoju]

I am relatively new to windsurfing as an engineer I found this very helpful, interestingly from my learning experience as a beginner I think people that teaching others windsurf should have a better understanding of the processes, I recently I have been teaching two total beginners in the way how i would like to be teached. Windsurfing is something I regret not doing it earlier in my life, BTW Nicos Videos are always educational.

[ymdmxdw]

Great explanation. Well done for your research. Definately gives me a new appreciation. I'm just starting to windsurf. This is very helpful. Thank-you.

[Condinou]

Thank you very much for your excellent, extremely interesting and well presented work. well done!

[anthonythm]

damn, easy ti understand. What a master piece. Even so many pilot dont know the relation between them

[marcelor.aiello]

The most serous and well done video on the topic !! Congrats for that model you made, deserves a separate video!

[christianamstutz]

Awesome. I'm a beginner windsurfer, and I was on my way to make some sort of visual model for understanding sailing courses. Thank you for saving me the task and providing me with such interesting concepts. Greetings from Buenos Aires

[slavascolear]

Wow! Thank you so much! And a special appreciation for the experiment 🙏🏄‍♂️⛵️💨

[TyphoonPilot]

Your explanations are sound. Very good.

[miedwiesport]

great job! thanks for sharing! I will show your video to my windsurf students!

[AlanAllegret]

Beyond just the great video, I admire the calm with which you handle the idiots "debunking" your explanations in the comment section. Nice job on both fronts!

[tylerrandolph]

Yip! Spot on. We also have center of pressure at the leading edge of the sail/ing etc that give a false leading edge through boundary and laminar flows. (Compression of fluid aka air) A flat surface doesnt fly, it uses friction aka no lift but uses a false centre of pressure caused by the aoa thus making a 'airfoil'. A air foil does both until speed is attained as you showed here. Thus making them farfar more efficient. At a great aoa, that front centre of pressure drops under the airfoil and stalls out the wing, creating nonlift and too much drag. Hence the ~45° max AOA.

[mrdjangofreeman]

As an aerodynamics engineer, i feel comfortable to state this tube is BRILLIANT 😊

[rkj]

Awesome! I'm looking forward to your series on foiling, speed sailing, and freestyle moves. 🙂 Endless content! 🙂

[windsurf]

Yes Sir!... geeking out on windsurfing - loving the scientific approach to the kit, designers like Ola (Simmer) and Bouke (Witchcraft) drive their innovation with this kind of thinking and testing (Witchcraft has lots of blog-style posts on their website talking curves, angles, flow and the like).

[bradleypatterson]

This is very interesting and cool to see the conclusions that 45D to the apparent wind generated the most pressure. Will be subscribing to watch for more videos.

[SupeRails]

thanks for the video! I've just tried windsurfing and I was really lacking the understanding of air/sail physics. Please do more videos!

[southpacific]

This is interesting, but also raises a question as to why we bother with a curved (ie camber induced) sail at all? The graph shows that the maximum force is produced at a sail angle from 40 to almost 50 degrees, though at the bottom of this range (40) some of that force is produced by camber, however at 45-50 degrees, ALL of the force is generated by sail angle alone, and none by Bernoulli's principle. Wouldn't it therefore be possible to have just as much lift from a completely flat sail (at the correct angle to the wind), vs a nicely profiled cambered sail? This demonstration of forces can't be the only forces acting on the system to produce power to generate forward momentum, as we all know that cambered sails are faster than non cambered sails.

[tangent_theta]

It took me longer than I'd care to admit to notice he was green screened onto the beach. 😂😂

[wavegurucanada]

Thank you for the effort. Very nice build model.
What about the dynamic pressure ?