Parametric Design Of Floating Caisson

Floating caisson is the key equipment of large shipbuilding facilities as the number of large-scale dock increases. The quality of dock door design would affect the whole performance of the dock, and determine the repairing time or maintenance quality. In order to improve the level of floating caisson design, this paper developes the parametric design system of floating caisson.There are two points showed as below relating to the stability of floating caisson in the Design Code of Drydock:(1) For the length more than 30 m of floating caisson, the initial metacentric height is not less than 1m when drawing at light-load.(2) During raising and lowering, the initial metacentric height should be not less than 0.3m after free surface correction.The general design in the past is traditional design by using manual analysis. Manual analysis is not only time consuming, complicated, and cumbersome but also error prone, which goes against improving the quality and shortens the period of design.This paper aims at shortcomings of traditional manual analysis, completes the secondary development using Visual Basic software and SolidWorks interface, develop a suitable system of parametric design of floating caisson.This paper has completed the tasks as follow:(1) Research the requirement of the Design Code of Drydock; summarize design features and design thinking of the floating caisson; learn SolidWorks 3D model software and secondary development.(2) Develop parametric design system of floating caisson based on the SolidWorks software. If principal dimensions are given, it can achieve the functions of subdivision, stability checking, and establishment of 3D model of interactive floating caisson, and generate superior programs meeting stability requirements, which can improve the quality and speed up the schedules.(3) Study the influencing effect of the centre of buoyance and gravity and the metacentric stability height along with the variation of variables relating to stability of floating caisson (the weight margin, the height between tidal tank deck and light load line).