Hello Bill, Grob,
I'm still a wee bit curious about the loads on the main beam. The tension in the sheet must "go" somewhere. Isn't a.m. tension rather large 6-7* (what you can pull by hand) of maybe 100-200N?
Is this a force so small that it's negligible? I get it to be in the magnitude of 3KN would this be about correct?
Or am I just sailing?
rgds
Patrik Elfving
Patrik,
In the texts that I have read no one seems to take account of main sheet loads when looking at mast compression and main beam loads. I think the reason for this is that to a greater extent the main sheet acts just like another stay. If you put tension on the main sheet it is just like pretensioning the stays, and that does not affect the maximum compression loads in the mast.
I think that the main sheet loads are not additional loads on the rig just loads that are necassary to react the wind loads.
Does anyone else have a better explanation?
Gareth
