Geometry always at the heart of MARIN’s work
Computational geometry is at the heart of much of MARIN’s day-to-day business, which includes the hull, appendages and propulsion design and optimisation, to the milling of models and detailed CFD calculations. And computational geometry is also set to play a key role in longer-term research and development carried out by MARIN, its clients and partners.
In 2012, MARIN started a new, long-term project to update and expand its geometry capabilities for hulls, appendages and propellers. The aim is to enable designers, CAD and CFD users to model and optimise their designs effectively and interface them with the outside world: from geometry input to analysis, (CFD) calculations and model production.
New propulsion design tools In July, MARIN started to develop new tools to design propellers and to generate suitable propeller geometry for panel and RANS codes. First, the well-known Rhinoceros® 3D modelling suite was selected as the basis for the new CAD tools. Because Rhino has a lot of out-of-the-box features, MARIN could focus on adding value and MARIN-specific functionality. MARIN was immediately able to develop multiple plug-ins for Rhino that are capable of read- ing and writing various propeller formats, showing the geometry on the screen and enabling the designer to manipulate the propeller design. Accurate representations of propeller geometry could then be generated for detailed calculations using MARIN’s unstructured and unsteady RANS code ReFRESCO.
Christian Veldhuis & Menno Deij,
c.veldhuis@
marin.nl 22 report
Hull lines MARIN’s existing hull lines’ design tool “Geometry Modelling of Ships” (GMS), which has been in development for
over 20 years, will also get a complete overhaul. Over the coming months and years, more and more functionality will be re-implemented and expanded as Rhino plug-ins using the current capabilities in GMS as a basis. Hull fairing, as applied in GMS, is one of these unique design capabil- ities that allow MARIN to design hundreds of hulls a year. There are simply no other tools available that give a designer such speed when drawing and fairing a hull. The existing knowledge and methods will be preserved in the new tools but further expanded with new, even more efficient hull drawing and fairing functionality.
Example of propeller modelled in Rhino
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