Team 191: Investigation of Ropax Ferry Performance in the Cloud

With Support From

Investigation of Ropax Ferry Performance

in the Cloud

An UberCloud Experiment

UberCloud Case Study 191:

Investigation of Ropax Ferry Performance in the Cloud

http://www.TheUberCloud.com

September 10, 2016

Team 191: Investigation of Ropax Ferry Performance in the Cloud

Welcome!

The UberCloud* Experiment started in July 2012, with a discussion about cloud adoption in technical computing and a list of technical and cloud computing challenges and potential solutions. We decided to explore these challenges further, hands-on, and the idea of the UberCloud Experiment was born, also due to the excellent support from INTEL generously sponsoring these experiments! We found that especially small and medium enterprises in digital manufacturing would strongly benefit from technical computing in HPC centers and in the cloud. By gaining access on demand from their desktop workstations to additional compute resources, their major benefits are: the agility gained by shortening product design cycles through shorter simulation times; the superior quality achieved by simulating more sophisticated geometries and physics and by running many more iterations to look for the best product design; and the cost benefit by only paying for what is really used. These are benefits that increase a company’s innovation and competitiveness. Tangible benefits like these make technical computing - and more specifically technical computing as a service in the cloud - very attractive. But how far away are we from an ideal cloud model for engineers and scientists? In the beginning, we didn’t know. We were just facing challenges like security, privacy, and trust; conservative software licensing models; slow data transfer; uncertain cost & ROI; availability of best suited resources; and lack of standardization, transparency, and cloud expertise. However, in the course of this experiment, as we followed each of the 188 teams closely and monitored their challenges and progress, we’ve got an excellent insight into these roadblocks, how our teams have tackled them, and how we are now able to reduce or even fully resolve them. This case study is about calculating the barehull resistance of a modern Ropax hullform and assessing the potential of reducing resistance with minor alternations. Hullform parameters and experimental results are available and owned by SimFWD. The purpose of this project was for a new entry engineer to become familiar with the mechanics of running a NUMECA FINE/Marine simulation in an UberCloud software container and to assess the performance of the cloud compared to resources currently used by the end-user. The benchmark was analyzed on local hardware, on virtual instances in the cloud, and on the bare-metal cloud solution offered by CPU 24/7 and UberCloud. We want to thank the team members for their continuous commitment and voluntary contribution to this cloud experiment, and to the whole technical computing community. And we want to thank our main UberCloud Experiment Sponsors Hewlett Packard Enterprise and INTEL for generously supporting all the 191 UberCloud experiments so far. Now, enjoy reading! Wolfgang Gentzsch & Burak Yenier The UberCloud, September 2016 *) UberCloud is the online community and marketplace where engineers and scientists discover, try, and buy Computing Power as a Service, on demand. Engineers and scientists can explore and discuss how to use this computing power to solve their demanding problems, and to identify the roadblocks and solutions, with a crowd-sourcing approach, jointly with our engineering and scientific community. Learn more about the UberCloud at: http://www.TheUberCloud.com.

Please contact UberCloud help@theubercloud.com before distributing this material in part or in full.

© Copyright 2016 UberCloud™. UberCloud is a trademark of TheUberCloud Inc.

Team 191: Investigation of Ropax Ferry Performance in the Cloud

Team 191:

Investigation of Ropax Ferry Performance

in the Cloud

MEET THE TEAM End User – Ioannis Andreou, Intern at SimFWD, Master Student in ENSTA-Bretagne. Team Expert – Vassilios Zagkas, SimFWD Engineering Services, Athens, Greece. Software Provider – Aji Purwanto, Business Development Director, NUMECA International S.A. Resource Provider – Richard Metzler, Software Engineer, CPU 24/7 GmbH. Technology Experts – Hilal Zitouni Korkut and Fethican Coskuner, UberCloud Inc. SimFWD is a research, development and application company, providing engineering services in the transport and construction industries. The company focuses on computer aided engineering technologies such as CFD and FEM applied to Ship Design. SimFWD can provide turnkey solutions to complicated generic problems in a cost effective manner, eliminating the overheads normally associated with a dedicated engineering analysis group or department. SimFWD aims at helping customers develop product designs and processes by supplying them with customized engineering analysis and software solutions, www.simfwd.com. Ioannis Andreou is currently finalizing his internship at SimFWD for his studies in ENSTA-Bretagne University and his Master of Research in Advanced Hydrodynamics. Main task of his internship was to develop further the company’s series of Ropax hullforms. SimFWD has been developing modular Ropax designs to address a range of ship sizes for various operational needs. The first part of the project is the validation of fully parametric Ropax hullform for the range of 120-140m.

USE CASE Objective 1 of this case study was to calculate the calm water resistance of a modern Ropax hullform

(140m overall length). The hullform is part of SimFWD’s series of Ropax hull specifically designed to

combine low environmental footprint with enhanced safety standards. Listed below are the main

dimensions:

L.O.A.: 140.00 (m)

Breadth: 23.00 (m)

Service Speed: 26.00 (kn)

Draught: 5.700 (m)

Block Coefficient (T=5.70): 0.57

“UberCloud, CPU 24/7 and NUMECA

provide quick and affordable access to a

truly reliable simulation platform for

FINE/Marine enabling engineers to

create smooth workflows for complex

hydrodynamic computations. A great

experience!

Team 191: Investigation of Ropax Ferry Performance in the Cloud

Objective 2 was for the intern engineer at SimFWD to get familiar with the use of FINE/Marine in an UberCloud application software container and compare the cost benefit in to in-house resources currently in use. The benchmark was analyzed on the bare-metal cloud solution offered by CPU 24/7 and UberCloud. All simulations were run using version 5.1 of NUMECA’s FINE/Marine software. SimFWD has carried out the set-up of the FINE/Marine model and simulation parameters, with the goal to generate an initial Power Curve in short time as well as retrieving the effect of small changes on the ship’s bulb design.

CHALLENGES AND BENEFITS

This case study was completed without facing any difficulties whatsoever. The entire process right

from the access to files in the UberCloud container, running the jobs in the CPU 24/7 cloud, up to the

retrieval of results to a local workstation was very convenient and without any delays. The user-

friendliness of the interface was a major advantage!

SIMULATION PROCESS AND RESULTS

Computations on the hullform were performed for 4 different speeds – 20kts, 22kts, 24kts and

26kts. All computations were performed using a fluid domain consisting of approximately 1.8 million

cells except for a speed of 22kts, where a finer mesh containing approximately 2.5 million cells was

additionally computed.

Fig. 1 Automatic Mesh Set-Up through C-Wizard

Shown in Fig. 2 below are results for a speed of 26kts:

Fig. 2 Travelling shot at 26knots: Wetted Surface 1919.96 m²

Parameters | Speeds 26.0 kts

FINE/Marine global, Resistance Units

Rt (Fx) [N] 1216853

Trim (Ry1) [deg] 0.01000

Sink (Tz) [m] 5.4617

ΔSink (Tz) [m] -0.2383

Team 191: Investigation of Ropax Ferry Performance in the Cloud

Fig. 3 Wave Elevation along hull length X.

Fig. 4 Streamlines colored by the relative velocity.

Team 191: Investigation of Ropax Ferry Performance in the Cloud

Hull Pressure Effects The bow hull pressure has a normal distribution over the most affected regions, bow front, and stem

near the waterline entrance.

Fig. 5 Overall Hull Pressure

Fig. 6 Flow streamlines on the hull

Following are some details regarding the simulation setup:

Number of time steps: 1500

Number of non-linear iterations : 5

UberCloud has provided a 16-core container, the average computation time on 16-cores for each

speed was approximately 4hours, however most of the computations at lower speeds converged

faster. This proved that FINE/Marine is also efficient from a scalability point of view.

Team 191: Investigation of Ropax Ferry Performance in the Cloud

As a next step we utilized the parametric geometry model to make small feasible changes on the

Bulbous Bow shape in order to assess the performance effect on the ship’s most prominent

operational speed throughout the year at around 22 knots. Below is a comparison of wave elevation

on the front area after altering the bulb design. At the left side of Figure 7 is the case of the revised

bulb and on the right for the standard case, and we see that the results are almost the same, except

for the revised bulb case where the waves that are presented on the mass fraction are smoother. A

small change in the bulb shape and the corresponding volume present a decrease of almost 5% for

the operational speed of 22 knots while decrease for the higher speeds is marginal.

Fig. 7 Wave Elevation Comparison after Bulb alternation.

Fig. 8 Wave Elevation Comparison at 22Knots View from Below.

Team 191: Investigation of Ropax Ferry Performance in the Cloud

CONCLUSIONS

The range of computations converged well for all speeds and the overall result was deemed as

reliable prediction for the range of bare hull resistance also compared to empirical results and

similar designs. This allows the user to set the boundaries on their Initial design process and work

towards the next steps with exploring hull modifications by formal or even automated optimization

processes. Results have also given valuable insight into available margin to optimize wave resistance

at the bow and streamlines in the after part.

We showed that the CPU 24/7 HPC bare-metal cloud solution provides performance advantages for NUMECA FINE/Marine users who want to obtain higher throughput or analyze larger, more complex models.

FINE/Marine provides proven highly dedicated tool for naval architects especially with its C-Wizard, embedded automated full-hex HEXPRESS mesh generator, easiness-to-use, performance, and accuracy, reducing the engineering and development time and cost.

CPU 24/7 and UberCloud effectively eliminate the need to maintain in-house HPC expertise.

The container approach provides immediate access to high performance clusters and application software without software or hardware setup delays.

The browser-based user interface is simple, robust, and responsive.

APPENDIX: UberCloud Application Containers for NUMECA FINETM/Marine UberCloud Containers are ready-to-execute packages of software. These packages are designed to deliver the tools that an engineer needs to complete his task in hand. In this cloud experiment, the FINETM/Marine software has been pre-installed, configured, and tested, in a container running on CPU 24/7 bare metal servers, without loss of performance. The software was ready to execute literally in an instant with no need to install software, deal with complex OS commands, or configure. UberCloud Containers allow a wide variety and selection of resources for the engineers because the containers are portable from workstation to server to Cloud. The Cloud operators or IT departments no longer need to limit the variety, since they no longer have to install, tune and maintain the underlying software. They can rely on the UberCloud Containers to cut through this complexity. This technology also provides hardware abstraction, where the container is not tightly coupled with the hardware. Abstraction between the hardware and software stacks provides the ease of use and agility that bare metal environments usually lack.

Case Study Authors: Vassilios Zagkas and Ioannis Andreou

Team 191: Investigation of Ropax Ferry Performance in the Cloud

Thank you for your interest in the free and voluntary UberCloud Experiment.

If you, as an end-user, would like to participate in this Experiment to explore hands-on the end-to-end process of on-demand Technical Computing as a Service, in the Cloud, for your business then please register at: http://www.theubercloud.com/hpc-experiment/ If you, as a service provider, are interested in promoting your services on the UberCloud Marketplace then please send us a message at https://www.theubercloud.com/help/ 1st Compendium of case studies, 2013: https://www.theubercloud.com/ubercloud-compendium-2013/ 2nd Compendium of case studies 2014: https://www.theubercloud.com/ubercloud-compendium-2014/ 3rd Compendium of case studies 2015: https://www.theubercloud.com/ubercloud-compendium-2015/ 4th Compendium of case studies 2016: to be expected in November 2016.

HPCwire Readers Choice Award 2013: http://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/ubercloud-receives-top-honors-2013-hpcwire-readers-choice-awards/ HPCwire Readers Choice Award 2014: https://www.theubercloud.com/ubercloud-receives-top-honors-2014-hpcwire-readers-choice-award/

UberCloud named 2015 Cool Vendor award from Gartner: In any case, if you wish to be informed about the latest developments in technical computing in the cloud, then please register at http://www.theubercloud.com/. It’s free.

Please contact UberCloud help@theubercloud.com before distributing this material in part or in full. © Copyright 2016 UberCloud™. UberCloud is a trademark of TheUberCloud Inc.