Ship Hull Design

The shape of a ship hull design is chosen to strike a balance between cost, internal arrangement, structural integrity, hydrostatics, hydrodynamics, and special considerations for the ship’s role. Finding the right balance can be a complex optimization problem that lends itself to the approach of simulation-driven design, which – over the last decades – has developed from “simple” wave resistance optimizations based on potential flow codes, to much more comprehensive studies based on RANS codes, often under consideration of multiple operation points and several different disciplines. To realize such an approach, it is crucial to have an excellent control over the properties of the ship hull, as well as a suitable workflow that brings together all the necessary components.

CAESES’ Ship Hull Design Capabilities

CAESES® is a dedicated CAD and automation environment for exploring and optimizing complex and performance-critical geometries (see also this overview on marine applications). In particular, it brings along several key capabilities for designing cutting-edge ship hull geometries:

Complete parametric modeling capabilities for any type of hull, including container ships, tankers, bulkers, ferries, cruise ships, catamarans, yachts, planning hulls, etc.

Smart parametric modeling approach based on parameterized cross-sections and continuous control of the respective input parameters.

High level of customization, i.e., no black box models, and full freedom to set up user-defined workflows.
Alternatively, morphing methods (generic or marine-specific, like Lackenby shift) can be used to deform an existing – imported – geometry. The morphing can be applied to a NURBS surface geometry and be exported as IGES/STEP/etc., or to a discretized geometry such as meshes or tessellations.

High robustness and flexibility of parametric models for reliable automated ship hull design studies and optimization.

Computations of basic hydrostatics, i.e. upright hydrostatics and intact stability.

Automated generation of line drawings from the 3D model.

Support of offset and panel data.
Generic interface for connecting to arbitrary external simulation tools (e.g. ANSYS CFX and FLUENT, FINE/Marine, STAR-CCM+, OpenFOAM etc.) and dedicated interface for Shipflow.
Interactive editor for NAPA ship hull form definitions.
Handling of constraints typical of ship design, including displacement, stability, center of buoyancy, hard points (engine foundations, containers, tanks, thrusters …), number of containers in hold, spaces, and more.

Learn More

Ship Hull Design with CAESES – Do it yourself!

1. Test the online demo model below.
2. Download CAESES®, register for a trial license, and open the double-ended ferry sample file downloaded in the previous step (this webinar recording provides some context for this geometry).
3. Watch the corresponding video for explanations on how the model is set up.
4. Create a geometry from scratch with the ship hull modeling tutorials in CAESES®.

DOUBLE-ENDED FERRY

This is a demo of a parametric double-ended ferry design in CAESES. The final geometry can be downloaded as STL, STEP, or as a CAESES project file to take a look at the setup.

LIVE PREVIEW

Case Studies and Blog Posts for Ship Hull Design

Data-Driven Design and Optimization of the INEOS Britannia AC75

The America’s Cup is not only a fierce sporting, but also an engineering competition. Years of development culminate in two months of intense match racing. Designing the hull of an AC75 presents a complex engineering challenge, with numerous factors to consider.

Tackling the EEXI and CII Challenge with Hydrodynamic Optimization

On January 1, 2023, the Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index (EEXI) and Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) will come into force, creating new challenges for operators of commercial vessels. Ship owners and managers must prepare for these requirements by assessing and improving their vessels as needed. This is crucial in order to earn the proper certificates, allowing them to continue sailing and trading internationally.

Container Ship Optimization at DSME

Ship Hull Form Optimization with CFD With a capacity of 14,000 TEUs, an overall length of 365.5 meters and a deadweight of 165,517 metric tons, the MSC Danit became the world’s largest container vessel when finished by Korean shipyard Daewoo…

Bulk Carrier Optimization at DNV

Bulk Carrier Optimization at DNV GL Although often seen as cheap workboxes of the worldwide dirty ore and coal trade, bulk carriers have to comply with an increasing bunch of regulations with efficiency, safety and ecologic background. DNV GL recently…

Optimization of a Jack-up Vessel at DEKC Maritime

Hull Optimization of a Self-Propelled Jack-Up Vessel DEKC Maritime has been responsible for the design and engineering of a retrofit of a self-propelled jack-up vessel. For this retrofit, the spudcans (the “feet” of the jacking legs) were increased in size…

Container Vessel Optimization at CSSC

MARIC (MARINE DESIGN & RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF CHINA), is one of the leading companies in the Chinese maritime industry, and is a relatively new user of CAESES®. One of their first projects using CAESES® is for in-depth research for container vessel hull optimization.

Optimization of a SWATH SOV Concept at Rolls-Royce Marine

Hull Optimization of a SWATH SOV Concept There is a fierce competition for the European market of offshore wind OMS (Operation, Maintenance and Service), expected to have a significant growth in the coming years. Shipowners are constantly pursuing lower costs,…

CFD Domain Generation from NAPA IGES Files

From time to time we receive NAPA IGES files from our maritime customers which are basically an assembly of often hundreds of single surface patches. The question is then: How can we quickly create a watertight, box-like flow domain for…

Twin Skeg Hull Design

In one of our recent projects a colleague created a fantastic surface model of a twin skeg ship hull. As a special request, the customer wanted to vary the twin skeg in order to conduct studies. After putting together some…

Hull Form Optimization with Lackenby Transformation

Most of our maritime CAESES® users probably know about this shift transformation for optimization of ship hulls: the Generalized Lackenby. It has been part of CAESES® for many years now, and it helps naval architects to modify an existing (e.g.…

Parametric Skeg Modeling in 2 Minutes

Dear ship designers, In this blog post we want to demonstrate how fast the creation of a parametric skeg can be achieved in CAESES®. Given is a bare ship hull surface. This surface is then taken as the only input…

Adjusting Displacement and LCB in 5 Minutes

In our latest CAESES® release 4.1.2, we have improved the methods to change existing geometries by means of shift transformations and shape deformations. In this context, existing geometries mainly means data that is given in another CAD system, and which…

Modification and Variation of Imported NURBS Geometry

Consider you have an existing geometry from another CAD system, and you want to conduct a design study with the geometry in CAESES®. Let’s assume the geometry was exported as a set of NURBS curves and surfaces, using a standard…