The soaring sails and unconventional engineering of Mr. Utzon's plan attracted the attention of Eero Saarinen, the Finnish-American architect, one of four judges for the final choice who plucked the Dane's work from an undistinguished group of entries.
"We have a longstanding collaboration between the family studies project in psychology and the SAIL project in engineering," says lead author Adela C. Timmons.
Although the basic idea behind solar sailing appears simple, challenging engineering problems have to be solved.
Chafer's 1,600-square-foot 1,600-square-foot 1,600-square-foot'Garde out of a Mylar sailt 2 microns thick (median thickness of a hair is 70 microns).
This paper uses the 'cover-factor' modelling methods of modern textile engineering to analyse the 'Viking' sail fabrics and assess their strength, resilience and performance in comparison with the linen sails from the wreck of the Vasa.
Since then, without mathematical or engineering training, he has been attaching sails and kites to nearly anything that isn't nailed down: surfboards, skis, kayaks, catamarans.
Unmitigated risk-taking is, by itself, not an intelligent strategy for engineering innovation, any more than an explorer sailing aimlessly out to sea is a strategy for discovery.
Their idea may not sail smoothly into the textbooks, however, as experts in marine engineering are skeptical.
But his Huayra belongs in a different category, Mr. Perkins wrote — that of "aesthetic engineering," like a Patek Philippe watch or the three-masted sailing yacht named Maltese Falcon that Mr. Perkins commissioned from the Italian shipyard Perini Navi.
The passengers make do with what engineering and naval experience they have in order to sail.
