Bluegame BGF45 foiling catamaran leans on Simcenter digital twins for a 30% drag cut

Bluegame has turned to racing-bred simulation tooling to shape the hydrodynamics of its BGF45, a 45 ft foiling catamaran. The headline number worth sitting up for is a claim of up to 30% drag reduction versus a conventional hull, a figure that would dwarf the single-digit efficiency gains the marine sector typically reports. The hull design work comes from Caponnetto Hueber, running Siemens Simcenter software rather than relying on iterative tank testing alone.

What the BGF45 is

The BGF45 is a 45 ft foiling catamaran aimed at owner-operators who want foiling performance without the lift-control complexity of a full-flying setup. Top speed is quoted at more than 35 knots. The key architectural decision is a foil-assisted configuration that keeps the stern in the water. That choice removes the need for the active lift control systems required on a fully foiling boat, while still delivering a meaningful cut in drag.

The BGF45 sits inside Bluegame’s BGF range, which the builder positions around foiling yachts rather than planing or displacement monohulls. For a buyer, the pitch is straightforward: a substantial portion of the efficiency benefit of foiling, at a lower systems-cost and complexity than a boat that leaves the water entirely.

Racing pedigree applied to a production hull

Caponnetto Hueber is the design house behind the work, and its co-founder and technical director Mario Caponnetto puts the collaboration in explicitly racing terms. His team previously worked with Bluegame on a 50-knot hydrogen-powered foiling catamaran built for the 37th America’s Cup. The BGF45 borrows directly from that program.

“Applying our hydrodynamic expertise, built in our America’s Cup work, to a commercial vessel requires powerful simulation tools,” Caponnetto said, crediting Simcenter with letting the team evaluate concepts quickly, refine the foil-assisted architecture, and hand Bluegame “a design that delivers measurable gains in efficiency and comfort.”

That is the honest caveat baked into this story. The 30% drag reduction is a claimed figure, not an independently verified one, and no third-party sea-trial data is yet published. What the source does establish is the method: structural simulation, seakeeping studies, maneuvering analysis, and fluid-structure interaction work all ran through Simcenter’s advanced structural tools and Simcenter STAR-CCM+ for computational fluid dynamics.

Where the digital twin earns its keep

Mike Croegaert, director of marine solutions for simulation at Siemens Digital Industries Software, frames the value as validation before expensive physical builds. “Shipyards must deliver meaningful performance improvements without adding operational complexity for customers,” he said, adding that simulation and digital twin capabilities let the BGF45 engineering teams “validate design decisions early and optimize hydrodynamic behavior across real world ocean conditions.”

In practice, that meant simulating wave impacts, turning trajectories, and foil-to-hull vortex behavior. Those visualizations served a second purpose: they gave the engineering teams and the shipyard a shared visual reference, what the source describes as a “link language” between the hydrodynamics specialists and the builder. For a production program trying to translate race-boat physics into a sellable product, that common reference is arguably as valuable as the drag numbers themselves.

Electrification and the Siemens tie-in

Beyond the hull, Siemens hardware shows up inside the boat. Sentron products form part of the BGF45’s electrification system, handling energy-flow monitoring and management. The result is that Siemens is present twice over: Simcenter on the design side, Sentron on the powertrain side.

For a foiling electric or hybrid catamaran, that systems integration matters. A hull that cuts drag by nearly a third reduces the energy budget required to hit a given speed, which feeds directly into range and endurance for an electric drivetrain. Bluegame’s BGF45 is not marketed purely as an electric boat, but the efficiency gain is exactly the kind of lever that makes electrification viable at this hull size.

What to watch

The interesting question for shoppers is whether the 30% figure survives contact with a real boat in real sea states. Foil-assisted hulls that keep the stern wet trade some peak efficiency for stability and simplicity, and the actual drag benefit varies with loading and speed. Until Bluegame publishes sea-trial data or an independent test runs the hull, the 30% number should be treated as a well-simulated design target rather than a guaranteed on-water result.

That said, the direction is sound. Moving America’s Cup-era simulation workflow into a production foiling catamaran is a credible path to efficiency gains, and it is the sort of engineering that tends to compound as foiling hulls move down-market toward everyday owner-operators. The BGF45 is not vaporware; it is a real program using mature simulation tooling to chase a measurable improvement. The only open question is how much of that improvement survives the transition from digital twin to waterline.