Hydrostar and Ropes Mesher

Marco S. Sotelo

March 2020

1 Introduction

In the following document will be introduced a Matlab script to generate an appropriate

mesh for calculations in Hydrostar and ROPES. The input for the subroutine is based
on files generated by Delftship. In this short report will be explained step by step 2
procedures to generate the meshes. The first one is performed by using as an input
a mesh generated by Delftship by using the command ”CFD meshes”. The second
procedure is to generate a mesh using the code HSMSH from Hydrostar. This is the
automatic mesher that comes along with the commercial license of the software package.
Both procedures will be explained in detail later on.

2 Basic commands in Delftship

For those who are not familiarized with the software Delftship, in this section will be
explained some basic commands that will be useful to manipulate the hull geometry we
need to generate the adequate files. The principle is to use a Delftship model to generate
an initial mesh or sections which we are going to be used to generate the files in the
different formats we need. To start with the overview of the basic commands, lets open

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a new model. To do that go to ”NEW PROJECT/Online model database”. With this
command the user has the chance to select a ship from the software database which
contains a variety of hull geometries (e.g. tankers, container ships, bulk-carries, etc).

For this tutorial we will use the generic ”Tanker” hull geometry, as can be seeing
in the following figure.

Figure 1: Delftship model of ”Tanker”

The default dimensions of the hull geometry are: Lpp= 227.9 [m], B= 44.8 [m],
T= 16.6 [m] with a Cb = 0.798

2.1 Scaling and geometry manipulation

Let us assume that we need to modify the main dimension of this model to Lpp = 220 [m],
B = 37 [m], T = 14.5 [m] and a Cb = 0.84. Delftship has some tools that can help us to
manipulate the geometry of the ship. To have access to this we can go in the Tool bar and
select ”TOOL” and go to the section ”Transform”. In this section will appear different
tools like ”Scale”, ”Move”, ”Translate”, ”Mirror” and ”Lackenby”. In this section only

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the command ”Scale” and ”Lackenby” will be explained. The commands will appear as
showed in the following figure:

Once you click in ”Scale” you have the chance to modify the scale in the 3 main
axis at the same time. For this case the values will be:

By doing this, we modified the main dimension of the ship from the original
value to the desire dimension of Lpp = 220 [m], B = 37 [m] and T = 14.5 [m]. The
command ”Scale” only modifies the main dimensions, but if we would like to slightly
alter the shape of the hull to achieve a desire form coefficient (e.g. Cb), additional
manipulations needs to be done.

To modify the shape of the hull we can use the command ”Lackenby”. With
this tool we can automatically change the shape of the stations to achieve a determined
displacement, LCB or Cb. This is an iterative method fully automated but is quite
sensitive to abrupt changes. For this case, if we want to go from a Cb of 0.798 to 0.84
we can not set up the desire Cb directly, otherwise is very likely that the iterations will
not converge. The procedure is click in the command ”Lackenby” and modify the form
block coefficient in the command window that appears. Once the form coefficient is set,
you have to click in ”Transform” to start the iterations. It is recommended to start
with small variations for example in this case was used 0.8, then 0.81 and finally 0.821.

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Always check the ”current value” (highlighted value) which is the actual result after the
iterations. In this case by setting the desire Cb to 0.821 the calculated value after the
iterations is 0.8404, which is good enough to the value that we were looking for. In color
red can be noticed the new shape of the sections, and bellow the modified water plane
and the new cross-sectional area distribution as showed in the following picture. If you
accept the changes must click in ”Accept”

In case the user would like to import a geometry in other format (e.g. IGES,
STL, etc), it is possible to do it but the procedure is not straightforward and will not be
covered in this report. Once the Delftship model is ready we can proceed with any of
the two meshing methods proposed in this report.

2.2 Calculating Hydrostatic information

Once the model is ready with the required dimensions and shape, it can easily calculate
the hydrostatic information for the desire condition we need. For this we have to start by
checking the settings and define the draft to the one we would like to calculate the design
condition. To do this we can go to ”Home/Project setting”. In the window that appears
there is all the general information of the model we are working with. The section that of

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main interest for us is ”Main particulars” where we can define the design draft of the ship.
Here normally should be set the design draft, but it is interesting for us to keep in mind
that we can modify this value, specially for the second way to generate a mesh. Once we
are sure about the main dimensions and we set the appropriate draft we can calculate
the design conditions by going to ”Calculations and extensions/Design hydrostatics”.
This command will create an external file with all the hydrostatic conditions at the
design draft (The one defined in ”Project Setting”). The information obtained here will
be useful for the generation of the files because apart from the geometry of the mesh
Hydrostar and ROPES need additional information about the vessel.