Hello
I would think that some of the leading Engineering schools in this country would love to take on a project that would come up with a canopy and cockpit design and testing them.
maybe several schools working on a project and then present them and have the Offshore folks pick the best one and make that the design that is used

just thinking
Thank you
jim

The UIM have made compulsory changes to cat canopies that have been applied to UIM Class One and the X Cat series after a twin fatal accident in Class One, the improvements specifically deal with a crash with a landing from a direction other than straight ahead and include structures that dissipate the force hitting the actual inner cockpit. Maritimo and any other boats that race to UIM rules would have to be modified to these rules.

The new Fury windscreen uses laminated stretched acrylic provided by Triumph Aerospace, this transparency is capable of withstanding 500mph bird strike as compared to 350 mph for polycarbonate

After ther 2009 Victory crash, Fury spent all of 2010 with Doug Wright and received major modifications and extensive cockpit re-infotrcements, that includes all of the UIM recommendations for C1 and some other measures that we all decided would be evn better. stopped short of a seperate steel roll cage and full time air system using a full face helmet, bur after seeing what happened at KW this year we are working on these now. The drag boat racers are well protected by these roll cages.

I doubt this type of close compact roll cage once properly built would collapse and entrap the drivers as someone mentioned earlier, but that is a serious consideration. An offshore boat is not likely to be turned rightside quickly or plucked out of the water like a breakaway capsule. If the driver are entrapped by a failed cockpit structure and running out of air then what.

What kind of failure was there on Page's canopy, Big Thunder and Warpaint were obvious, there canopy's were over 15 years old.

Page canopy appeared to be intact, they must have had an air delivery problem after the cockpit filled with water, we will have to wait for the official investigation/report to discover what happened. Its important so that we can all learn and improve on.

Who is conducting the "official investigation"?

Impressive! Stretched acrylic is a good material. Expensive though. But as far as I know the tensile strength is similar to polycarbonate? So I don't understand the difference in bird strike resistance?


How did you calculate the forces on the cockpit? Or did you use the 20 tonnes per square meter as stated by UIM?

Just curious!

now, THAT'S what i'm talking about...