Alan
I’ll try to answer your numbered paragraphs:
1/ Sure enough, but only if the sail has been slackened quite brutally along the battens, like an accordion. With a normal half-slack tension, that vertical curve will not take the ‘chain camber’ or catenary curve (..see ‘Arne’s Chain calculator’...)
2/ Right again, but my experience is that quite moderate hand-tension is enough to adjust this, and anyway, the resulting change in camber/chord ratio is within plus or minus 1% of the chord. There will be no run-away camber no matter how slack the sail is along the battens, and it is not realistic to pull the camber right out of the sail.
In practice, my sails definitely are in the low-stress family - only the boltropes see real loads.
As for your last paragraph,
I think you worry too much about the un-even vertical distribution of max camber. If this had led to my sails only having 4% camber on average, they would have felt rather lame, which they certainly don’t do in real life. When I replaced the hinged-batten sail on Malena with the first cambered panel sail, I may have lost a bit brute force in the new sail, but I suspect that this was because the hinged sail had ten percent camber while the new sail had only eight. The new sail was definitely as efficient to windward as the hinged sail (NL 30).
Take a look at the two photos below. Note how the first and last half-metre of the sail is quite flat, like a sail made with the shelf foot method. I noticed this and commented it on the diagram of the test panel in NL 30, p.22. My thinking is that the incoming wind sees a luff very similar to that of a hinged-batten sail or one made with shelves. The same goes near the leech.
In other words, if the wind can enter the luff and leave the leech of a sail at the same angles with all three sail types, then the three sails are likely to produce similar lift and drag as well.
My experience with different sails in my Malena in the early nineties supports this.
Finally: Over the years, I have argued quite a lot for the barrel cut way of making cambered panels. I will still do so, but only for amateurs. I begin to realise - finally - that to sell sails, it is not enough that they are good. They also have to look good - that is, with an appealing planform and with sails free from wrinkles. In addition, the batten ends should have tidy-looking terminations, and battens (ends), yard and mast should be painted, if not anodised.
I leave this to the pros. I mainly focus on..
ease of making, ease of handling, performance and longevity of the sail.
Arne