Design and Analysis of an Overwater Electric Hydrofoil Board

Hydrofoils have been used on a variety of watercraft, including ships, boats, and personal watercraft. This study proposes an electrically propelled watercraft to navigate along waterways using foiling technology. Due to its more straightforward design, this watercraft finds its application in sports and fitness training, military, personal, recreational activities and bathymetric surveys. The major components in the design of the watercraft are the hydrofoil wings (front and rear), board, mast, fuselage, battery, propulsion system and control system. The purpose of the hydrofoil is to lift the board and mast out of the water and support it dynamically on wing-like lifting surfaces. They are used to increase speed without using more fuel while reducing the effect of waves on the watercraft, drag, and the power required. Here we modeled the hydrofoils with varying angles of attack to check the variation in results. Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations are performed on hydrofoils to determine drag and lift forces, which validates the design feasibility of the watercraft. Comparing the results for different hydrofoil cross-sections at different angles of attack helps us select the one with minimum drag and maximum lift values. We then determined the maximum speed of the watercraft through numerical analysis using the resultant drag and lift values. Reduced drag increases the speed of the watercraft while the power required decreases and increased lift facilitates high payloads.