Development of Network-Distributable CFD-Based Optimization System

本研究的目的是开发一个基于CFD的网络分布式通用水动力优化设计系统。本系统最大的特点是结构紧凑、网络可分布，解决了目前船舶设计中信息化应用中的CAD、分析方法和优化方法独立开发、网络接口不完善等问题。然后，在第二年的剩余时间里，系统进行了扩展，包括网络可分配的结构，以便每个模块都可以位于同一局域网内的仲裁计算资源上。作为演示，本系统集成了一个用于船舶设计的商用CAD系统NAPA。CFD和优化器模块是由本研究人员开发的Rakine源面板方法和基于SQP和GA的非线性规划程序。最后，第三年(最后一年)的主要工作指向了对本系统和文件的进一步评估。结果表明，目前的系统为希望充分利用其IT应用资源的设计师提供了优势，这使得设计师有更多的机会研究替代设计。总之，本工作的所有任务都已圆满完成，似乎有可能在许多设计应用中进一步扩展本系统。事实上，该扩展目前已经在与几个IT行业合作进行中。

The objective of the present research is to develop a network-distributable CFD-based optimization system for general hydrodynamic design. The most important feature of the present system is the compact and network-distributable architecture, which resolves many issues in current usage of IT applications in ship design, i.e., CAD, analysis methods, and optimization methods have been independently developed and the networking interfaces are not well established.In the first year and part of the second year, focus was placed on development of CAD/CFD/Optimizer integrated design system on a standalone server. Then in rest of the second year, the system was extended including the network-distributable architecture so that each module may be located at arbitral computing resource within the same local area network. As a demonstration, a commercial CAD system for ship design, NAPA, was integrated into the present system. The CFD and optimizer modules are a Rakine-source panel method and non linear programming codes based on SQP and GA, all of which were developed by the present investigators. Those tasks were successfully completed, and results presented for a container-ship bow optimization were shown to be very promising.Finally, main effort in the third year (final year) was directed toward further evaluation of the present system and documentation. It was shown that the present system offers advantages to designers who wish to make full use of their IT application resources, which leaded to an important fact that designers have more opportunities to study alternative designs. In conclusion, all tasks of the present work had been successfully completed, and further extension of the present system appeared to be possible in many design applications. In fact, the extension has been currently in progress in collaboration with several IT industries.