Andrea Mola

Nicola Demo, Marco Tezzele, Andrea Mola et al.

In this contribution, we present the results of the application of a parameter space reduction methodology based on active subspaces to the hull hydrodynamic design problem. Several parametric deformations of an initial hull shape are considered to assess the influence of the shape parameters considered on the hull total drag. The hull resistance is typically computed by means of numerical simulations of the hydrodynamic flow past the ship. Given the high number of parameters involved - which might result in a high number of time consuming hydrodynamic simulations - assessing whether the parameters space can be reduced would lead to considerable computational cost reduction. Thus, the main idea of this work is to employ the active subspaces to identify possible lower dimensional structures in the parameter space, or to verify the parameter distribution in the position of the control points. To this end, a fully automated procedure has been implemented to produce several small shape perturbations of an original hull CAD geometry which are then used to carry out high-fidelity flow simulations and collect data for the active subspaces analysis. To achieve full automation of the open source pipeline described, both the free form deformation methodology employed for the hull perturbations and the solver based on unsteady potential flow theory, with fully nonlinear free surface treatment, are directly interfaced with CAD data structures and operate using IGES vendor-neutral file formats as input files. The computational cost of the fluid dynamic simulations is further reduced through the application of dynamic mode decomposition to reconstruct the steady state total drag value given only few initial snapshots of the simulation. The active subspaces analysis is here applied to the geometry of the DTMB-5415 naval combatant hull, which is a common benchmark in ship hydrodynamics simulations.

Gianluigi Rozza, Haris Malik, Nicola Demo et al.

Reduced order modeling has gained considerable attention in recent decades owing to the advantages offered in reduced computational times and multiple solutions for parametric problems. The focus of this manuscript is the application of model order reduction techniques in various engineering and scientific applications including but not limited to mechanical, naval and aeronautical engineering. The focus here is kept limited to computational fluid mechanics and related applications. The advances in the reduced order modeling with proper orthogonal decomposition and reduced basis method are presented as well as a brief discussion of dynamic mode decomposition and also some present advances in the parameter space reduction. Here, an overview of the challenges faced and possible solutions are presented with examples from various problems.

Federico Tamburlin, Giovanni Canali, Giuseppe Alessio D'Inverno et al.

This work presents a differentiable framework for the parametrization and shape optimization of industrial CAD geometries represented by multi-patch NURBS surfaces. The method enables the deformation of complex CAD models through a physics-informed geometric parametrization, allowing direct morphing driven by physical constraints without the need to prescribe a predefined deformation strategy. A neural displacement field, implemented as a multi-layer perceptron acting on the NURBS control points, provides a compact parametrization of the admissible design space while preserving patch connectivity. Global geometric quantities relevant to hydrostatic design, including displaced volume, wetted surface area and buoyancy centroid, are formulated as differentiable integral operators evaluated on the parametric domain. These quantities are computed through Gauss-Legendre quadrature combined with analytical B-spline derivatives for surface metric evaluation, allowing gradient propagation to the deformation parameters while limiting the computational overhead of automatic differentiation. The proposed framework operates directly on CAD representations without intermediate mesh generation. Numerical experiments on a modified KVLCC2 hull demonstrate the capability of the method to satisfy competing hydrostatic constraints while producing smooth CAD-compatible geometries and showing stable convergence across multiple random initializations.

Nicola Demo, Marco Tezzele, Andrea Mola et al.

In the reduced order modeling (ROM) framework, the solution of a parametric partial differential equation is approximated by combining the high-fidelity solutions of the problem at hand for several properly chosen configurations. Examples of the ROM application, in the naval field, can be found in [31, 24]. Mandatory ingredient for the ROM methods is the relation between the high-fidelity solutions and the parameters. Dealing with geometrical parameters, especially in the industrial context, this relation may be unknown and not trivial (simulations over hand morphed geometries) or very complex (high number of parameters or many nested morphing techniques). To overcome these scenarios, we propose in this contribution an efficient and complete data-driven framework involving ROM techniques for shape design and optimization, extending the pipeline presented in [7]. By applying the singular value decomposition (SVD) to the points coordinates defining the hull geometry - assuming the topology is inaltered by the deformation -, we are able to compute the optimal space which the deformed geometries belong to, hence using the modal coefficients as the new parameters we can reconstruct the parametric formulation of the domain. Finally the output of interest is approximated using the proper orthogonal decomposition with interpolation technique. To conclude, we apply this framework to a naval shape design problem where the bulbous bow is morphed to reduce the total resistance of the ship advancing in calm water.

Andrea Mola, Marco Tezzele, Mahmoud Gadalla et al.

In this work, we present the results of a ship propeller design optimization campaign carried out in the framework of the research project PRELICA, funded by the Friuli Venezia Giulia regional government. The main idea of this work is to operate on a multidisciplinary level to identify propeller shapes that lead to reduced tip vortex-induced pressure and increased efficiency without altering the thrust. First, a specific tool for the bottom-up construction of parameterized propeller blade geometries has been developed. The algorithm proposed operates with a user defined number of arbitrary shaped or NACA airfoil sections, and employs arbitrary degree NURBS to represent the chord, pitch, skew and rake distribution as a function of the blade radial coordinate. The control points of such curves have been modified to generate, in a fully automated way, a family of blade geometries depending on as many as 20 shape parameters. Such geometries have then been used to carry out potential flow simulations with the Boundary Element Method based software PROCAL. Given the high number of parameters considered, such a preliminary stage allowed for a fast evaluation of the performance of several hundreds of shapes. In addition, the data obtained from the potential flow simulation allowed for the application of a parameter space reduction methodology based on active subspaces (AS) property, which suggested that the main propeller performance indices are, at a first but rather accurate approximation, only depending on a single parameter which is a linear combination of all the original geometric ones. AS analysis has also been used to carry out a constrained optimization exploiting response surface method in the reduced parameter space, and a sensitivity analysis based on such surrogate model. The few selected shapes were finally used to set up high fidelity RANS simulations and select an optimal shape.

Marco Tezzele, Nicola Demo, Mahmoud Gadalla et al.

We present the results of the application of a parameter space reduction methodology based on active subspaces (AS) to the hull hydrodynamic design problem. Several parametric deformations of an initial hull shape are considered to assess the influence of the shape parameters on the hull wave resistance. Such problem is relevant at the preliminary stages of the ship design, when several flow simulations are carried out by the engineers to establish a certain sensibility with respect to the parameters, which might result in a high number of time consuming hydrodynamic simulations. The main idea of this work is to employ the AS to identify possible lower dimensional structures in the parameter space. The complete pipeline involves the use of free form deformation to parametrize and deform the hull shape, the high fidelity solver based on unsteady potential flow theory with fully nonlinear free surface treatment directly interfaced with CAD, the use of dynamic mode decomposition to reconstruct the final steady state given only few snapshots of the simulation, and the reduction of the parameter space by AS, and shared subspace. Response surface method is used to minimize the total drag.