WSW.
I read your piece all the way through.
Wow!
The way you systematically anticipated problems and tried to solve them should be an inspiration to us all.
Your project is intensely well thought out, but there seems to be some gaps in your reasoning.
I'll start with the wing design.
The single wing is best. Adding another wing only increases the total lift by about 20% over the same area with a single wing.
Essentially, you will have a biplane on end.
The further the wings are apart, the better. They can be further apart linearly, further apart laterally, or both. Ancient Chinese junks are thought to have had their masts staggered along the deck, with some on the port side and some on the starboard side. This accomplished two things:
1.) It kept the sail surfaces as far apart as possible, and
2.) It kept the Yards and Boomlets fro fouling on one another. If they were all installed on the center line, the Yards and Boomlets would have had to be shorter.
Another problem I see with your mechanical wing design is top hamper.
Apparently, you want to have a motor on each rib to flip the foil over, when changing tacks. This motor, and its associated gearing is certainly going to add weight, and it's going to do it relatively high up. Not only that, but each rib is going to need an axle that's strong enough to keep both halves in line with one another, in both bending and torsion (as you have well illustrated). This too is going to add weight.
The wing surface itself, with its vertical spline structures is also going to be heavier than ordinary sail cloth.
What this adds up to is a wing sail which is probably much heavier than it needs to be. This raises the CG of your boat, making the moveable ballast (the only ballast it has) less effective when you need it most (when the boat is knocked down by a sudden gust or a big wave)
Now the Chinese Lug (CL), with its many Boomlets, was also a very heavy sail, especially when fully set. But it was reefable (and quite easily so), with the Boomlets and Yard sliding down the mast, and stacking up neatly at the sail base, as the halyard was eased. This accomplished two things:
1.) it lowered the Center of Area (CA), and
2.) it lowered the Center of Gravity (CG) significantly as well.
Both of these happened right at the time when they were most desirable.
Your wing sail has no such virtue. It is either fully up or fully down.
And I can imagine the excitement when folding this thing down during any kind of wind or seaway.
I would suggest going to a symmetrical airfoil and a soft wing surface.
This way, the ribs can be much simpler and a whole lot lighter.
And, like the CL, they can be lowered to reduce the Sail Area (SA) and CG. Being symmetrical, the wing can be made to feather into the wind much more reliably. Not only that, but you could effectively control the wing with just two servos. One would use an internal continuous line to both raise and lower it. The other could sheet it, if the mast is far enough forward for the effective CA to be behind it. Such would cause it to automatically feather into the wind, when the sheet line is slacked.
IMHO, the moveable ballast is nowhere near as redundant as you may think it is. There are two reasons for this:
1.) All the ballast is above the Center of Buoyancy (CB). This means that it is most effective when the boat is sailing level. As the boat heels, it becomes less and less effective. At the same time, the lee deck structure starts to dig in, causing adverse yaw (making the boat turn down wind) at the worst possible moment. Sure, your boat can save itself by quickly feathering the wing, but this will do little good, if the gust is quickly followed by a breaking wave.
2.) Since all the ballast weights are on a single circular track, the ones on the ends can block those between them. So, in reality, you might as well have just two or three weights. Just pray to God nothing jambs the track when they need to be moved.
Back in the earlier days of the long distance single handed ocean races, such as the OSTAR, The Around-Alone, and The Vendee, there was a debate about moveable ballast. How much should be allowed?
They settled on just enough to heel the boat 10 degrees in calm conditions. As you can probably guess, designers took full advantage of this by making very stiff hulls (high initial stability), so more moveable ballast could be used without heeling the boat over the 10 degrees in calm conditions. This later set the stage for canting ballast keels.
I thought of a different solution.
My solution was to stipulate that the moveable ballast not exceed 50% of the fixed ballast (a boat with a 500 kg fixed keel, for example, would be allowed 250 kg of moveable ballast). If such a rule were adapted, canting ballast keels would have been effectively outlawed before they ever appeared.
Such a solution would, IMHO, not be a a bad idea for your proposed boat. Then you would have real redundancy. Because even if the moveable ballast got stuck on the wrong side, the fixed keel could keep the boat from flipping. And, failing that, could certainly aide in righting the boat. With just above the CB moveable ballast, there is no way.
Water ballast would work with such a rule. Half would be allowed to flow to the lee side, just as the boat is to change tacks. The other half would be pumped to the new high side, once the change in tacks was completed. With all moveable ballast, this idea would not work.
I think your ideas have great merit, but don't, IMHO, add up to a really good boat. A major reason I say this, other than the issues I have already brought, is that structural systems are far less likely to fail than mechanical ones, assuming they are both well engineered and well built.
I love the computer controlled, moveable ballast idea and have thought of it for rotating space stations (to create the effect of Earth like gravity). As the astronauts moved along the inside of the outer rim, they would change the space stations CG slightly, causing it to wobble as it rotated. Automated weights on tracks, controlled by a centralized computer, would compensate for this.
