Volume element model mesh generation strategy and its application in ship thermal analysis

Abstract

This paper introduces a mesh generation strategy devised and implemented for the volume element model (VEM), and elaborates key contributions of the strategy in enhancing the VEM as a prominent tool in ship thermal modeling and simulation. The VEM mesh generation strategy employs ray crossings and ray-triangle intersection algorithms developed in previous studies, and constructs sufficiently accurate geometric representations of the whole ship within permissible time frame using hexahedral meshes. In addition, this work demonstrates the strategy's practicality in thermal analysis of a notional all-electric ship, which is characterized by intricate structures and multiple internal components, i.e., thermal loads. Ship thermal solutions obtained in this assessment verify the proposed mesh generation strategy's ability to improve the overall computational efficiency of the VEM, by allowing it to obtain plausible thermal solutions with respect to time and space using a coarse independent mesh.

An Open-Source Processing Pipeline for Quad-Dominant Mesh Generation for Class-Compliant Ship Structural Analysis

“…In comparison, we use a larger class of quality measures which describe the rules of the classification societies more comprehensively. The papers [12][13][14] present recent accounts of the use of automatic meshing in ocean engineering for tasks such as structural optimization and hull shape optimization. In contrast, for this paper, we have a strict focus on the fully automatic structural analysis according to the rules of the classification societies.…”

Mathematical formulation and demonstration of a dynamic system-level ship thermal management tool

“…The final ship mesh depicted in Figure 4 is obtained by eliminating all VEs lying outside of the actual ship geometry from the enclosing mesh block. Such a task is realized by implementing ray-crossings and ray-triangle intersection algorithms [21]. 3its coordinates, nodes, and adjacent element numbers.…”

“…The VEM mesh generation process is as follows: (1) read a Stereolithography (STL) file and extract ship geometric information; (2) read user-input text files including: the total desired number of volume elements in x, y, and z directions, number of bulkheads and decks with predefined thicknesses, and spatial location, physical dimensions, and properties of ship equipment; (3) generate an enclosing hexahedral mesh block that comprises the entire ship; (4) obtain the final ship mesh via ray tracing algorithm [19]; (5) allocate equipment inside the ship and assign physical propertiesto each volume element; and (6) export the mesh information to the numerical solver and VisIt visualization tool[20]. Only a brief description of the mesh generation procedures is included in this paper; details on vemESRDC mesh generation strategy can be found in[21].…”

Generation Method and Application of Product-Oriented Medial Axis

“…12c. The mesh generation is to disperse a continuous region into finite elements, and set up finite nodes in each element [18]. The continuous region is seen as the collection of the elements with connection at nodes [19].…”