Beheer en Onderhoud CFD modellen: Hull grid generation for potential panel methods using Blender

The objective of this report is to demonstrate methods to efficiently generate approximate hull geometries suitable for programs based on potential theory such as Hydrostar and ROPES. The methods used in this report make use of the free and open‐source 3D creation suite Blender. The mesh modelling capabilities available in Blender are perfectly suitable to quickly create approximate hulls starting from an accurate representation consisting of triangles of the actual hull shape. Two methods will be detailed in this report. In the first method, a panel approximation is created from scratch. In the second method, an existing panel approximation of one vessel is moulded around the hull of a different vessel. After that, some sample computations are executed in Hydrostar, including a grid convergence study to determine the dependence of the results on the panel density.