Technology
Starting at the top
Holding up a superyacht mast or getting the power from the engine to the wheels on a 950hp racecar are a relative walk in the park when your first project was creating carbon cables for a 124-metre suspension bridge
Many of the key innovations that advance the sport of sailing are not new inventions derived from first principles but spin-off applications of technology that has been fit for purpose in a different sector of industry. There are a few key drivers for dedicated R&D, like the America’s Cup, but the marine leisure market isn’t big enough to be the sole focus for a large hi-tech manufacturer’s research and development. And that’s where Carbo-Link comes in. Invented as a light bulb filament, carbon fibre was later developed into a structural material by aerospace scientists before being adapted for thousands of applications from bicycles to body armour, badminton racquets and boats. More recently, due to its unique material properties – very low thermal expansion, no creep, no fatigue, no relaxation, extreme strength and light weight – carbon fibre has also become the high-performance material of choice for tensile and torsional cables, including yacht rigging. Founded in 2000 by Dr Andy Winistörfer as a commercial spin-off from a lab led by the civil engineering luminary Professor Urs Meier at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) and ETH Zurich, Carbo-Link is a hi-tech carbon fibre engineering company that works across many sectors – not just sailing but also civil engineering, industrial machinery, aerospace, motorsport and more.
64 SEAHORSE
It has the resources and economy of scale to maintain a fast-paced R&D programme that invents new carbon fibre cable and tube technology and continually refines the products that it supplies to various sectors. There’s a lot of cross-pollination. All design, engineering and manufacturing happens in Switzerland within an aerospace certified production facility close to Zurich. This allows Carbo-Link to collaborate with world- leading institutions and commercial organisations. Being located centrally in Europe also simplifies logistics in delivering many solutions by road, air cargo from Zurich Airport or by sea from various sea ports not far away. Carbo-Link’s CEO, Dr Winistörfer, was instrumental in bringing both bundled and consolidated carbon cables to market and has been leading the development of them ever since. He was part of the team responsible for the first viable terminations for carbon cables in the 1990s and solved the crucial, thorny problem of how to anchor them reliably to other materials. The initial drivers were cutting-edge civil engineering projects, but just a few years later it was being used for America’s Cup yacht rigging, too.
Pioneering technology The core cable technology used in early Carbo-Link rigging was first developed by Meier in 1987 and commercially implemented by Winistörfer and others from EMPA
Above: some of the key technology used in
Carbo-Linkʼs yacht rigging comes from DTM (above), Formula 1 and Le Mans racecar R&D. Uber-strong, ultra-light torsional cables were originally developed into solid carbon
driveshafts – the same principles have now been scaled up to make immensely strong cables and foils for high
performance superyachts that can cope with torsion loads that are equivalent to the
maximum torque of 75 Bugatti Veyrons...
in 1996 to handle the massive static and dynamic loads of a 124-metre cable-stayed bridge near the Swiss city of Winterthur. They designed the bundled cables – some of the strongest ever made, with loads up to 1,200 tonnes – headed up the engineering team and oversaw the manufacturing. 30 years on the cables are still in perfect condition, proving beyond doubt their longevity and reliability. The bundled cable technology was licensed to manufacturers, including for yacht rigging – and is still being sold today.
CL Solid
Bundled carbon cables were a better yacht rigging solution than alternatives on the market 15 years ago such as Spectra, PBO, Vectran and metal rod. However, they aren’t ideal. The bundle of cables needs a cover for protection and to be held together. This has to be removed regularly for inspection and then replaced with a new cover, so the whole lot has to be taken off the mast and shipped back to the supplier for servicing. Also, it increases the cable diameter which results in extra wind resistance. The smaller frontal area and significantly lower drag of slimmer cables can give a competitive advantage. Carbo-Link was already making solid (consolidated) carbon fibre cables for use as industrial crane pendants in 2001. The very light weight of these components enables one man to build an enormous crane
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