Assuring quality ship hull form representation for downstream applications

In this paper an automatic ship hull form data repairing and domain preparation algorithm for direct mesh generation and CFD computations is presented. The developed tool reads surface patches in IGES file format and automatically detects and repairs commonly found geometrical and topological errors. Based on the repaired hull form, automatic domain preparation strategies are implemented for mesh generators such as Numeca HEXPRESS and SnappyHexMesh. Data range region identification method is used to divide ship hull forms into different regions and to export the repaired and consistent geometry in the colored Standard Tessellated Language file format. The repair algorithms are tested against several test cases (ship hull form representations) to evaluate the tool robustness. The results achieved reveal that the developed tool substantially decreases the time, and therefore cost, required for CAD data repairing and domain preparation.