Hydroptère in the Race for the Outright Sailing Speed Record with Dassault Systèmes PLM

Paris – December 9, 2008 – Dassault Systèmes (DS) (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, announced today that l’Hydroptère will attempt to beat the outright sailing speed record with a pure speed version, redesigned and improved with Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA.  l’Hydroptère has already beat two world speed records and become the fastest sailing boat over one nautical mile and 500 meters, confirming its reliability and performance.

l’Hydroptère is a trimaran with foils or underwater wings that extract the boat’s hulls from the water when a certain speed is reached. This considerably reduces the ship’s hydrodynamic drag.  For French navigator Eric Tabarly, two-time winner of the Ostar transatlantic race, it was only with the advent of the right technology and composite materials that Alain Thébault’s l’Hydroptère was able to fly in 1994, thanks to Tabarly’s support and a partnerships with several aerospace industry heavyweights.  In October 2007, using CATIA, l’Hydroptère was reconfigured for pure speed in an attempt to beat the absolute speed record of 49.09 knots (91 km/h) over 500 meters.

“l’Hydroptère is a project that combines technology, performance and human adventure. Thanks to CATIA, considerable enhancements have been made to the high speed version of the trimaran increasing our chances of beating the absolute speed record by the end of this year,” said Alain Thébault, designer and skipper of l’Hydroptère.  “Dassault Systèmes and Transcat PLM in Switzerland provide our design team in Lausanne with invaluable support that along with the Dassault Systèmes solutions helps us improve the boat’s performance and structural integrity.” 

Whenever weather conditions are favorable, Alain Thébault’s team test runs the boat to monitor her behavior. Necessary adjustments are then made using CATIA. In addition, Hydroptère designers use DS yacht design methodologies and Solutions for Composites to perfect other projects’ designs.  They are currently implementing the recently announced Cenit Naval Architect module for precise weight, hydrostatic and stability calculations.

“We are very excited at the prospect of l’Hydroptère <//font>beating the absolute speed record,” said François Mathieu, yacht market development leader, Dassault Systèmes.