Audace Team from the University of Trieste takes the overall win at this year’s SuMoth Challenge with ‘Flying Lina’ – a boat that pushes the use of natural fibre composites on all levels. ampliTex™ and powerRibs™ flax fibres have been used for the hull and the team even arrived with some hybrid foils that used ampliTex™ to replace about 50% of the carbon fibres.
Pushing the Limits
Last year’s SuMoth Challenge already left us impressed. The student teams showed very interesting concepts and seeing their sustainable moths foiling across the water of beautiful Lake Garda was simply inspiring. This year, we were proud to be back and continue our support of the SuMoth Challenge as official partner. The young generation represented by these students is the future of our society and our high-performance industries. Events like the SuMoth Challenge are incredibly important for them to explore new ideas and gain valuable experience across so many different areas while working in an interdisciplinary team. And on top of everything they are just pushing the limits of sustainability in high-performance foiling applications.
Last year’s teams came back swinging with improved and completely new boats and concepts while several newcomers managed to impress with their first designs and incredible boats. Flax fibres had also become very popular among the teams to be used in many different areas of the boats. Certainly among the highlights was the moth from Solent University that proudly put its ampliTex™ reinforced hull directly on show and combined it with beautiful wings made from a custom-bent wood frame. Audace Team from University of Trieste came to Malcesine with their first moth and made quite the debut. ‘Flying Lina’ was clad in an eye-catching chrome wrap, hiding a hull fully made with ampliTex™ and powerRibs™ flax fibre reinforcements. Natural fibre composites were also extensively used across other components like their solid wings – a sandwich structure with honeycomb core and flax fibre face sheets – and their innovative foils that replaced about half of the carbon fibre reinforcement with ampliTex™ natural fibres.
Sharing Natural Fibre Expertise
While the SuMoth Challenge culminates at the shore of Lake Garda during the annual Foiling Week, it’s positive impact can be felt year-round. The student teams are hard at work all year long to develop their concepts, find the best solutions and try out new technologies. To provide them with a source of knowledge and to pass on important experiences from the industry to the students, the SuMoth Challenge regularly organises masterclasses with its partners. After Paolo Dassi’s masterclass on biobased composites from last year, we were happy to contribute to another masterclass in collaboration with Persico Marine this year. Persico welcomed a big group of students participating in the SuMoth Challenge to their facilities in Nembro where they were able to learn directly from Persico’s best boatbuilders. Paolo, our Marine and Industry Manager, was once more representing Bcomp and sharing some of our deep expertise on natural fibre composites with the students. Getting hands-on with our ampliTex™ and powerRibs™ flax fibre technologies gave the teams an opportunity to work with natural fibre composites and create test samples that were mechanically tested in a laboratory before they were given a new life as this year’s trophies.
A Success Story
Foiling Week and with it the SuMoth Challenge 2023 are already in the past, but we are still happily looking back on this outstanding event. More teams than ever have taken part in the challenge bringing together hundreds of students from across the world with the shared goal of advancing sustainable technologies and practices in the sailing world and beyond. We are happy to be a part of this success story and can’t wait to see the SuMoth Challenge come back even bigger next year and for the teams to push boundaries even further!
The SuMoth Challenge
The SuMoth challenge invites student teams from all over the world to design, build, and eventually race a sustainable foiling Moth. The teams bring together students from different backgrounds to work on a common goal and gain valuable experience with sustainable technologies driving the future of sustainable boat building. Teams have to go through all the phases from material selection and design process, to engineering, actually building the Moth and finally getting it on the water. Time and budget constraints add to the complexity of this endeavour. Such a project can only be tackled with the right support and the teams can count on the partners of the SuMoth challenge.
Learn more:
SuMoth Challenge www.sumoth.org
Foiling Week www.foilingweek.com
Images © Bcomp / Flurin Efinger
Video © We Are Foiling Media
