Development of Finite Element Modeling System for Ship Structures

Abstract

In dealing with structures of complex configurations such as ship structures, generation of finite element model is one of a major bottleneck. To overcome this problem, an object oriented finite element modeling system, MODIFY, has been developed by authors1)2)3)4). In ship structural design, many kind of finite element analyses are carried out for different geometric models. For example, whole ship analyses with shell elements are carried out in early design stages, and analyses of welding part with solid elements are done for detailed design stages.In this paper, several improvements of the finite element modeling system are introduced. First, a solid-object is defined as a geometry-object to deal with solid models. second, a two-manifold B-Rep model is used for a geometrical representation of all geometry-objects and analytical-condition-objects. Third, a 3 D solid mesh generator based on the front method is developed. Finally, by using an object oriented database for construction of the system, it becomes possible to deal with a large number of object oriented data in the system.Several examples of a finite element model generated by the system are shown.