Release 5.3 – the maritime special

The newly released CAESES version 5.3 was devel­oped with a strong focus on the design of marine systems such as ship hulls and propul­sors. Its new func­tion­al­ity is pri­mar­ily ded­i­cated to users with the CAESES add-ons Maritime and Pro­peller, but it also brings along several news and improve­ments that will benefit all users. Many of the devel­op­ments included in this release were driven by direct customer input, as well as by require­ments from FRIEND­SHIP SYSTEMS’ own project and support engi­neers, with years of expe­ri­ence working on the field.

Sim­i­larly to the previous tur­bo­ma­chin­ery focused release, the guiding prin­ci­ple of this release was to simplify and stream­line typical processes such as the modeling of para­met­ric geome­tries and their evaluation.

Ship Object and Modeling Workflow

A new modular ship modeling workflow was imple­mented that guides the user though the process in an easy to follow step-by-step manner. Define main dimen­sion and grad­u­ally add com­po­nents like aft, mid, and fore ship, bulb, and skeg. Dif­fer­ent options for each com­po­nent – based on dif­fer­ent modeling approaches – will be offered, from a library that will con­tin­u­ously be expanded.

All of this will be embedded in the new so-called Ship Object, a high-level entity that stores all relevant infor­ma­tion and readily provides it to down­stream steps in the process, like hydro­sta­tic com­pu­ta­tions or flow sim­u­la­tions. Apart from the geo­met­ri­cal para­me­ters, addi­tional infor­ma­tion can be added to the Ship Object, like floating, oper­at­ing, and envi­ron­men­tal conditions.

Of course, the Ship Object can also be used for hull geome­tries that are not a result of the new modeling workflow. A Generic Ship Object can be fed with a dif­fer­ently modeled geometry, or even an imported model, will auto­mat­i­cally extract the main dimen­sions, and can oth­er­wise be processed in exactly the same way as pre­vi­ously explained.

Hydro­sta­tic Calculations

A com­pletely new envi­ron­ment for hydro­sta­tic cal­cu­la­tions has been imple­mented. Based on the input provided by a Ship Object, the new hydro­sta­t­ics in CAESES provide the fol­low­ing capabilities:

• A new find equi­lib­rium algo­rithm, which is faster, more robust, and reliable.
• Com­pu­ta­tion of form para­me­ters, i.e., an exten­sive list of all the typ­i­cally relevant para­me­ters a naval archi­tect likes to monitor when designing.
• Much faster and easier deter­mi­na­tion of the sec­tional area curve.
• Righting lever curve com­pu­ta­tion with or without free trim.
• Auto­mated and readily avail­able IMO rule checking.
• Complete hydro­sta­t­ics val­i­dated against other estab­lished tools.

In addition to the general com­pu­ta­tions, the new Implicit Hydro­sta­t­ics func­tion­al­ity can be used to match any ship per­fectly to any desired hydro­sta­tic con­straints (LCB, dis­place­ment, mid-frame position, length of the parallel midship can all be con­trolled and adjusted simul­ta­ne­ously exactly to the spec­i­fied require­ments) using an easy to set up Gen­er­al­ized Lackenby.

Pro­peller Modeling Workflows

Pro­peller design­ers will also benefit from newly intro­duced modeling work­flows in CAESES 5.3. Again, these will provide an easy to follow process that leads the user though the dif­fer­ent steps and intri­ca­cies involved in the gen­er­a­tion of a para­met­ric pro­peller geometry — from the def­i­n­i­tion of the first basic prop­er­ties, all the way to a model that is readily usable for sim­u­la­tion. With the help of the new modeling work­flows, vir­tu­ally any type of pro­peller can easily and con­ve­niently be modeled in CAESES, includ­ing con­ven­tional, high skew, tip rake, surface piercing, and toroidal propellers.

As the blade profiles are a crucial cen­ter­piece of any pro­peller, a suite of tools is avail­able for their con­fig­u­ra­tion and para­me­ter­i­za­tion: profiles from airfoil data­bases (e.g., in Selig or Lednicer format) can be imported and processed, or profiles can be gen­er­ated from camber and thick­ness dis­tri­b­u­tions, which are either given as curves for a single profile or as surfaces in nor­mal­ized space for a complete blade. Once the blade surface is gen­er­ated, it can be final­ized with a newly imple­mented tip, as well as an improved variable radius root fillet.

To evaluate the prop­er­ties of a pro­peller design, dif­fer­ent cal­cu­la­tion routines are provided, such as a cal­cu­la­tor for the main par­tic­u­lars, cav­i­ta­tion analysis using the Burrill diagram, minimum thick­ness cal­cu­la­tion accord­ing to class rules, a pro­peller slip cal­cu­la­tor, and the deter­mi­na­tion of the expanded area ratio.

New Doc­u­men­ta­tion

Not only has the doc­u­men­ta­tion been updated and vastly expanded by new expla­na­tions, tuto­ri­als, and samples, a com­pletely new user guide portal has been created that gives user an easier and more struc­tured access to all avail­able resources. This portal is nat­u­rally avail­able in the doc­u­men­ta­tion browser within CAESES, but will also be made avail­able as a web resource online for added convenience.

And Much More

But the news don’t stop at the afore­men­tioned head­lines. Plenty of addi­tional devel­op­ments have been added that are not only limited to marine applications,

• A com­pletely new and vastly improved selec­tion behavior in the 3D view.
• Intro­duc­tion of bounded para­me­ters that can hold expres­sions as bounds. Useful for robust para­me­ter­i­za­tions, con­straints, and inter­ac­tive point handling.
• New pro­ce­dures for smooth and accurate para­met­ric fitting of curves.
• Robust gen­er­a­tion of flow domains for marine applications.
• Pre­de­fined software con­nec­tors for a selec­tion of various tools for marine applications.
• New BRep oper­a­tions for closing, patterns, and extrusions.
• New trans­for­ma­tion that gen­er­ates the inverse of any given transformation.
• New context menu oper­a­tions to, e.g., adjust design vari­ables to target, add leading numbers to scopes, or create subscopes.

Check out the changes log for all details and get the latest version today!

Join the Release Webinar!

Join our release webinar on March 17, 2025, at 3:00 pm CEST and find out more about the new func­tion­al­ity in CAESES 5.3.

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