Is there a way to simulate water in creo?

[jtaylor-10-11]

Hello PTC Community,

For my Engineering your Future class in high school we have to build a catamaran boat, but we only get 1 opportunity to 3D print it without paying. We are building our models for the boat in PTC Creo Parametric, and I am wondering if there is a way to test it with water in simulate. I would like to see if the boat, first off, is able to float. I am also interested in finding out how well it performs under various wind conditions, and how fast the boat will go because that is what we are graded on.

Thanks so much!

- Justin

[danderson]

Hi Justin,

To do what you describe above there's no easy single button solution in Creo Parametric. You would need high end CFD software to compute boat stability and speed in multiple water conditions.

You can approximate the answers using hand calculations with standard out of the book formulas and then automate these calculations using Creo parametric feature analyses and relations.

Don

[jtaylor-10-11]

‌Ok thanks Don. What software/raw equations would you recommend? We also have CREO Simulate so could I do something with that?

Thanks!

-Justin

[ChrisKaswer]

Justin,

There are ways to analyze your situation using the "Behavioral Modeling Extension" (BMX). There was a presentation given a number of years ago at the annual PTC/User conference that shared a method to assess a boat for buoyancy and stability using BMX. I believe you can answer most of your questions with this tool, as Don also mentions. You will not be able to answer "how fast it will go" unless you use a CFD tool - and that would be a fairly involved study by itself! If I can find a reference to this presentation, I will add it to this thread. Bottom line is, first principals are used to help solve your problem through leveraging accurate CAD models and engineering relations in BMX.

Chris

[dschenken]

You might find this helpful about check to see if the boat can float:

BMX Feasibility, Free Pro/E Wildfire Video Tutorial, Consumer Product Design/Development, E-Cognition Inc

[JonathanHodgson]

I did a flotation analysis a few years ago, to check whether a vessel would float, and how level it would sit.

Without watching the video linked by dschenken, I suspect the method was similar: calculate the COG position of the complete vessel; assume a water surface plane, calculate the volume and COG of the submerged part of the vessel (using the waterline plane to cut the hull shape); and then use an optimisation feature to set the volume to match the total mass, and to minimise the horizontal offset between the two COGs.

If you get stuck let me know, and I'll try to dig out those old models.