Research Fellows
Orest Mykhaskiv
Early Stage Researcher 2 at Queen Mary University of London
OpenCascade Technology (OCCT) is a powerful open-source geometric CAD kernel. It includes most of the functionality available in modern CAD systems and could be considered as the competitor to the commercial tools available on the market. OCCT provides a wide range of algorithms for parametric and surface modelling, reading/writing of CAD files and other useful shape manipulation algorithms.
One of the biggest advantages of the software is its open-source nature. Access to the source code creates the possibilities for further independent development and modification. This is the key ingredient that makes OCCT suitable for automatic differentiation.
CAD model parameterisation could be considered as a computer program, which takes as an input certain design parameters (e.g. thickness of a blade profile), applies a sequence of geometric operations to construct surfaces of the shape (Pressure/Suction surfaces of the blade).
In this project, the AD tool ADOL-C was successfully integrated into OCCT, enabling calculation of shape derivatives (CAD sensitivities). CAD sensitivity in the surface point quantifies displacement of the point w.r.t. the perturbation in design parameters. The information allows using CAD models in the gradient-based shape optimisation loops.
