See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/303738074

Wooden boats: innovative techniques for an ancient material Nautech

Article · January 2016

CITATIONS READS

0 590

2 authors, including:

Cristiano Fragassa
University of Bologna
251 PUBLICATIONS   2,142 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Increasing energy efficiency of thermal energy generation plants using automatic control View project

Design of solar cars View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Cristiano Fragassa on 02 June 2016.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 TECHNOLOGY
Cristiano Fragassa, Giuseppe Lucisano

Wooden boats:
innovative techniques
for an ancient material

T
THE ADOPTION OF MODERN TECHNIQUES FOR he yachting sector is suffering, especially
in Italy, a sharp downturn. Among the rea-
INDUSTRIALISING PRODUCTION COULD GIVE
sons is the slowness with which products
A BIG BOOST TO THE RELAUNCH OF WOODEN are re-innovated.
BOATS IN THE YACHTING MARKET, ESPECIALLY The design and development of an inno-
IN TERMS OF ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL vative boat demands the ability, not to be
SUSTAINABILITY OF THE PRODUCT. taken for granted, of combining high per-
formance with low costs and maximum
eco-sustainability. This combination must be present both
in the end product and the processes used to build it.
The relaunch of wood as a structural material for boats
at least ensures eco-sustainability, thanks to the biocom-
patibility of the product and the possibility of recycling it
at the end of its life. So we have to act also to obtain the
best performance.
Generally wood offers several advantages thanks to its
intrinsic properties such as strength, reliability, ease of
working and pleasing aesthetics. Even its great anisot-
ropy can be exploited to ensure better performance, as
happens with carbon fibre. However, for a correct use of
“wooden resources” we need to change the way of de-
signing and conceiving boats, above all as concerns the
industrialisation phase. It is in fact fundamental to reduce
current production costs to give wood a chance of com-
peting on equal terms with such “poor” materials as fi-
breglass.

Industrial cutting
Reducing production costs means in particular making
the phases of cutting and assembly of components more
competitive, and this can be done if components are
mass produced and not, as happens currently, shaped
“by the patient art of master carpenters”.
Work centres for woodcutting could help here. They
make it possible to produce, with great speed and pre-
cision, a large number of components of any shape.
Their use in the yachting sector is still widely underval-
FEBBRAIO 2016

ued, though they could make it possible to make more

economic all and higher quality products. In addition,
cutting with CNC machines, combined with the use of
three-dimensional, parametric and associative CAD soft-
48

ware, would have the advantage of permitting consider-
able customisation of products on the basis of custom-
er needs. In particular, performance in high-speed work
is much better when tool paths are based on the de-
velopment of NURBS (complex 3-D surfaces). In prac-
tice, the tool path is defined by CAD software in the de-
sired shape, eliminating the CNC calculations that nor-
mally precede operations. Using these 3-D geometries
defined directly by CAD we can drastically cut the man-
hours needed to build a boat with traditional methods, as
explained here.
Work centres
All cutting operations were carried out at the Consor-
zio Studi e Ricerche in Rimini using an Accord 40 FX-M
work centre from the SCM Group. This is a multitool,
multifunction model, not particularly expensive, suitable
especially for high flexibility and high precision produc-
tion, without great limits on shapes. It is usually used to
produce wooden panels (even with multi-panel nesting
technology), but also adapts perfectly to plastic materi-
als, resins and light alloys. It would thus be a production
plant particularly suitable for boatyards.
However, the choice of this work centre for the study is
also motivated by various technical reasons. The Accord
40 can offer excellent cutting precision all over the work
area, even at very high speed, thanks to the rigidity of the
mobile gantry structure with twin motors. Parts of any
shape, even very thick ones, can be produced with a
Figure 1 - 3-D modelling of
the hull: a) external shell
only; b) with ribs; c) with
ribs and templates.
Figure 2 - 2D
five axis working group with high performance and min- representation
imum bulk. It also permits pendulum working, with two of template
interchangeable environments, one for loading and one geometry and
working lines.
for working, which increases productivity and ergonom-
ics. The new tool change system, permitting changes in
just five seconds, minimises downtime.
From CAD to CAM
The first phase saw the definition of a theoretical and
operational method for the modular design of a wood-
en hull, as described in a recent NAUTECH article. Start-
ing from a 3-D scan of a medium-sized hull, the three-di-
mensional geometry was reworked and divided into
strips. A 3-D model was made of each strip, together
with its 2-D planar form, which makes it possible to po-
sition it on the two-dimensional panel during cutting. In
some cases the strip had to be divided into parts be-
cause of the size of the work area of the work centre.
To optimise the transfer of the geometries from CAD to
CAM, the DXF standard was chosen. This can design
complex geometries with any CAD on the market, but is
also compatible with the most widespread CAM, includ-
ing the one we used.
To connect the geometries of the components to the
working specifics a protocol was defined, thanks to
FEBBRAIO 2016
which the CAD designer can associate right from the de-
sign phase the working technologies to the geometries
produced, simply by knowing the name of the technolo-
gies and the geometries to which they must be applied.
49
 TECHNOLOGY
Figure 3 - The working process: a) CNC plant; b) wooden panel on the work surface; c) first cut along the lines.
On the CAM side, and advanced import model was devel-
oped that could interpret this protocol and apply the asso-
ciated technologies to the various geometries. This mech-
anism favours maximum integration of the production
process by automatically generating machine programs.
In parallel, an in-depth study of the “Raked Strip Plank-
ing” process, which we will speak of below, identified its
peculiarities, allowing improved parameters for CNC op-
erations. In this way, for example, the most suitable tools
and working methods were chosen.
The development of the “skeleton”
In the following phase the entire bearing structure where
the strips would be positioned was designed and de-
veloped. All the missing parts that would make up the
demonstration prototype were designed and made. Start-
ing from the 3-D model of the hull, its bearing “skeleton”
was defined, and the main structural characteristics iden-
tified. Then the CNC machine was used to create tem-
plates, ribs and finally strips. A specific analysis led to
Figure 4 -
Components the decision to make the ribs using a laminated compo-
before sition, using templates to model the raw material and ob-
assembly. taining the finished piece through surface working on the
FEBBRAIO 2016
50
work centre. The various modules required to build the
hull were then made available to the Carlini yard in Rimini,
which assembled them.
Raked Strip Planking
The hull was built, as mentioned above, using “Raked
Strip Planking”, an innovative construction technique that
provides light and strong structures. This form of carpen-
try uses epoxy adhesives to fix the various wooden com-
ponents. The wood, glued and impregnated with epoxy
resin, becomes rigid and strong, and can absorb part of
the working loads, making it possible to space the inter-
nal structures, the ribs and stringers, with benefits for the
final cost, weight and speed of construction. The plank-
ing, with its dual function of sandwich core and structur-
al material, becomes able to resist the longitudinal bend-
ing stresses due to equipment load and sea action. The
wood and epoxy resin sandwich has strength and hard-
ness, weight for weight, greater than steel, aluminium or
fibreglass. This building technique produces a “monolith-
ic” hull that is exceptionally rigid and strong and com-
bines the best structural qualities of wood in the longitudi-
nal direction with the strength of glass fibre in the vertical
and diagonal direction.
Epoxy resin has mechanical characteristics far higher
than any polyester or vinylester resins: thanks to the great
adhesion of epoxy resins it is possible to produce lami-
nates with a high fibre-matrix ratio with strength and light-
ness that cannot be obtained with other kinds of resin.
The superior mechanical and impregnation characteris-
tics make it possible to reduce the quantity of both matrix
and reinforcing fibre, maintaining high resistance to fa-
tigue and microcracking (the tendency of resins to come
away from a laminate). Finally, since epoxy resins have
shrinkage of less than 2%, the end product is more stable
and looks better for longer.
 Final considerations
What we have described here is perhaps a unique experi-
ence in the integrated use of assisted design and numer-
ical calculation tools as a support for manufacturing, us-
ing numerically controlled machines, the entire structur-
al part of a wooden boat. We had to aim for considerable
simplification and modularisation of the production pro-
cesses to make the production and assembly of compo-
nents competitive. We modified design philosophy, shift-
ing it towards components to be mass produced, rather
than shaped by the patient art of master carpenters. We
worked in parallel on three complementary aspects: “de-
sign”, aimed at developing a new conceptual and con-
struction methodology; “production”, implementing soft-
ware for controlling the machine tools; “constructive”, de-
veloping new building principles, towards an “innovative
carpentry”, which could replicate the construction solu-
tions, preserving high performance and technical quali-
ty while at the same time reducing the costs and times
of production.
This modular design now follows a well-defined theoret-
ical and operational methodology, aimed at optimising
work on machine tools and assembly phases. Starting between the “design” and “manufacturing” phases, in- Figure 5 -
Executional
from rough drawings of the boat we obtain the 3-D ge- cluding an in-depth knowledge of the characteristics of phases of Raked
ometries of the single strips, modelled in a format that the machine tool on the part of the designer. Positions, Strip Planking.
can be interpreted by the CAM software of the machine references and developments on the planes, in addition
tool. This implies the need to create greater integration to the geometry, become fundamental aspects for the fi-
nal design. We thus obtain a 3-D project of the structure
as a whole, including stringers, ribs, planking and indi-
vidual strips. These design models, which described the
wooden components, are available both “curved”, show-
ing how they will be mounted on the boat, and also de-
veloped on a plane, describing how they will need to be
worked on. Associated with the drawings are the working
parameters, modified on the basis of the technology and
machine tool that will be used. In particular, in technolo-
gy, we used “Strip Planking”, a construction method that
produces light and resistant, and so economic all struc-
tures. The planking, with its dual function of sandwich
core and structural material, can resist the longitudinal
bending stresses due to equipment load and sea ac-
tion. The wood, glued and impregnated with epoxy res-
in, becomes rigid and strong. It can now absorb part of
the working loads, making it possible to reduce the inter-
nal structures, ribs and stringers, reducing the end cost,
weight and speeding up construction. It was an interest-
ing experience of complete engineering and industriali-
sation of a wooden hull that was innovative and eco-sus-
FEBBRAIO 2016

tainable, suitable for modern yachting, and which effec-

Figure 6 - DIDA MASSIMO 80 CARATTERI
tively lays the foundations for producing a “wooden boat
TASSATIVI in kit form, but made-to-measure”.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

51

View publication stats