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Quick Start Guide

! Estimation of Hull

Performance, in 6 Easy Steps

EHP is an extremely easy to use

Add-on for STAR-CCM+. By quickly
going through this quick start guide,
you will have all the information you
need to start importing your hull
design and get started with
estimating its performance
characteristics with STAR-CCM+.
Weve put a lot of time and effort it to
making the GUI as intuitive and easy
to use as possible. All VPD-Series
Add-ons are focused on this basic
approach: Talk about the design, the
physics, and the test conditions and
let the Add-on do the CFD technical
conversion, automatically, and
consistently. We hope you really
enjoy EHP and we cant wait to see
what you create with it. Weigh
anchors, roll hawsers and lets get a
bone in her teeth!

Installation of EHP
EHP is delivered in a .nbm file

that is installed into STAR-CCM+ via

Navigate to your EHP.nbm and

STAR-CCM+ again and this will

double-click.

complete the installation. The

the Plug-In Manager

installation

1. Select Tools -> Plugins

is

complete when the

EHP icon is
added to the
m e n u b a r.
Congratulations! EHP
is ready to go. When
you click the icon, you
will be asked first

2. Click on the Downloaded tab

whether you want to

and Add Plugins button and

start from new, or

3. Click Install and when
the Plugin Installer
window appears, click
next. You will have to
accept the license
agreement and will be
p r o mp t e d t o r e s t a r t
STAR-CCM+ after
installation is complete.
On Windows, STAR-CCM+
may not come back after
restar t, simply star t

from an existing .ehp

file.
For this guide, click new.

Step 1
Geometry
Import

Full Hulls
CAD
Model Scale

!
!
!

OpenHulls
Tessellated
Full Scale

EHP will accept many different

types of geometry both CAD-based
and tessellated. There are some
requirements for the hull topology
that should be noted. EHP will
accept:
Fully Enclosed Hulls, with or
without superstructure.
Open Half-Hulls, as is typical from
Hull Design Software.

Set the Import Units to match

your import file. If your geometry is
in model scale, insert the model
Scale Factor. Your model will be run
at its actual size as described by the
i mp o r t fi l e , b u t c a n b e p o s t
processed in either as-imported, or
full-scale sizing.
Once your geometry is ready for
EHP, click on Import Geometry.

Your hull will be imported

and plotted for you in the
default orientation. If your
hull orientation looks the
same as the example top
hull image, then click
Forward and go to Step 2
If your orientation looks
like any of the other
example images, then click
the radio button next to the
image that matches your
orientation (You can also
manually select the bow
and deck directions.) and
click Re-Orient Geometry.
This is also a good time to
set the Project Name and
Engineer Name.
Click Forward to Step 2

Step 2
Position of Hull

The next step is to align your hull to the analysis

coordinate system. EHP will plot a graph scene where
the goal for the user is to
align
the
aftperpendicular to the
origin of the plotted
coordinate system. The
buttons below allow the
user to move the hull in
increments of 1x and
10x of the center
distance value
(expressed in
meters). You can also
use the Top and
Front buttons to
move the hull
laterally and also to
visualize sinkage.
EHP will monitor for reasonable values of reference
length and LPP and will warn if these values are
outside of normal ranges. The RefLength text box will
be red when the values do not make sense and you
should continue to position the aft perpendicular if

Alignment of the Aft-Perpendicular

Setting Sinkage
this value is still red. You can zoom in with the
middle mouse wheel to look at the details of the water
line at the aft perpendicular if needed. You can also
change the center reposition value to an exact
number if you know this explicitly. If you would
prefer to set a RefLength explicitly, after the hull is
positioned correctly, you can insert the RefLength

Water Line

and click Freeze to ensure your provided

RefLength will be used instead of EHPs calculated
value. Once the positioning is complete, its time to
check whether the hull geometry is ready for
meshing. Click Forward to move to the next step.

Step 3
Pepare Hull

Check the Hull Surface

Automatic or Manual Fixing

The
next step is to check the hull to see if can be
surface meshed and therefore can make a volume
mesh for the analysis. EHP can detect automatically
if the hull is a full hull or a open half-hull and will run
some routines to
automatically
prepare or fix the
hull surface. Please
note EHP does not
currently suppor t
closed half-hull
geometries, so there
is no need to close
the hull if it was
taken from standard
hull design software.
EHP is already
prepared to handle
open hull geometries.
To start, simple click Check Hull. If there are no

users, so if you have not repaired surfaces in STARCCM+ yet, either fix the surface in your exporting
software, or consider taking a training in STAR-CCM+
geometry preparation.
After EHP reports that no errors are found, you
can optionally set your Initial Trim and also Clip the
Superstructure (if applicable) from the top of your
hull geometry. EHP will
calculate weight by initial
sinkage,
so
the
superstructure is not
needed and will slow the
calculation down if
included. Ensure the clip
height is above the
designed maximum water
level for the speeds you
intend! Set Trim first, then
Clip Superstructure, and
click Commit for each

problems, EHP will report No Errors Found! and

there is nothing more for you to do! If errors are
found that EHP could not automatically fix, you will
be given an option to enter manual surface repair.
Manual surface repair is for experienced STAR-CCM+

before continuing. You can

reset the values back to
default if you make a mistake. Be careful to reset the
values in the opposite order as setting.

Step 4
Hull Parameters

The next step is to define the hull parameters. This

includes defining the body of water in which the hull
will perform. There are inputs for the temperature
(from 0-30C/32-86F) and whether the body of
water is fresh or sea
w a t e r. E H P w i l l
automatically calculate
typical values for these
i n p u t s . Yo u c a n
customize and override
the values by typing
into the editable fields
for Density and
Dynamic Viscosity.
At this point you
will notice a red border
around the large
central button and
some fields below are in
red. These need to be calculated first by EHP. Click
the Calculate Approximate Values button and EHP
will do a quick calculation for the Displacement of
Water, and the key coefficient values. After this is
complete, you can again customize and override

Set Water Type

Verify Key Values
these values if you know the exact values. EHP will
use this values instead for the main analysis.

Please Note!!!
The displacement is for the actual hull you
imported. If the hull is in model scale, the
displacement will represent the amount of water the
model scale hull displaces, not the full size hull.
Any editable text fields on this panel can be
overridden after the red borders and text boxes have
disappeared.

Step 5
Report Panel

The
next step is set your output and how you want
to view it.
If you would like to use
your companys PPT
template, you can load it
b y c l i ck i n g o n L o a d
Template. Otherwise, a
standard PPT format will
be generated.
All checked plots and
scenes will be included in
the PPT. If they are not
checked, the tables and/or
images will not be made in
the sim file. This does
speed the calculation up
somewhat since the
images are not created,
but keep in mind you will
have to manually create
the scenes after the run is

complete if you need to

view them later.
You can optionally output all plot data in CSV
format to later plot/post process in excel or other

Customize your Output

Use your own PPT Template
software that accepts table data as input. The plots
provided in the PPT are directly from
STAR-CCM+ and therefore are not
editable without the CSV
information.

Step 6
Test Parameters

Finally,
lets setup the virtual test parameters and
get results for your hull design.
By default, EHP is set up to
provide a batch script to
submit the design to your
computing environment. EHP
is very efficient in solving your
case, but will still take 8-16
cores to compute for a single

day turnaround. Only run

interactively if you plan to
run a very coarse mesh and a
single speed run.
The default velocity range is
provided based on a Froude
Number range of 0.15-0.45 in
0.1 increments. If you need
non-uniform velocities, click Adjust Velocities and
you will be given a table that you can edit manually.
The Reset Velocities checkbox should only be used
to remove this table and default back to the standard
velocity cases.
Initial trim and sinkage can be preserved by
unchecking Simulate Time and Simulate Sinkage.
Otherwise, STAR-CCM+ will calculate new trim and

Choose your mesh

Run your Virtual Test
sinkage based on the weight of the hull from initial
sinkage, and the Center of Buoyancy.
Meshing is as easy as using the slider. The
nominal mesh size is expressed as a ratio to
the LoA. The default value is L/50.0. The
finest is L/100.0 and the coarsest is L/35.0
If you are an advanced STAR-CCM+ user, you
can select Do not generate Mesh and EHP
will only setup the physics and boundary
conditions. You can then manually set all
meshing parameters and save the sim file
yourself. You can still use the batch script
created by EHP, but be careful not to change
anything in the sim file other than mesh
settings.
Finally you can supply your own custom
scenes by prefixing them with UserScene_.
EHP will include them in the PPT for each converged
speed.
Finally click Setup and after
about 5 minutes, you will see
your hull volume mesh result.
The batch file will be created
already, just close EHP, save the
sim file, and follow the directions in the batch script.

!
!
VPD-Series Add-ons for STAR-CCM+
!

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!
!

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