Motivation

• Provide a reusable Python workflow to run OrcaFlex 10.3 simulations from Python and perform a single-run genetic-algorithm (GA) optimization of Turret parameters for emergency-deployment (ED) cases.
• Support evaluation-by-blackbox: modify model, run full dynamic simulation, extract full-time-domain Von Mises stress, and use the maximum as the optimization objective/constraint.

Description

• Added config.py to centralize model path, object/result names, variable bounds, GA settings, damping-mode options (same, fixed_axial, separate), and helpers build_gene_space / decode_solution for gene ordering and decoding.
• Added orcaflex_runner.py which encapsulates OrcFxAPI usage: loads base.dat, updates Turret mass, centre-of-mass Z, sets geometry to three equal cylinder segments, writes added-mass/damping (with resilient attribute lookup), calls CalculateStatics() and RunSimulation(), snapshots simulation, and returns an EvalResult (stress or error).
• Added metrics.py to robustly extract a line time history for Von Mises Stress, take the time-series maximum, and convert units to MPa when appropriate.
• Added run_ga.py as the GA driver using pygad.GA: constructs gene space from config.py, decodes solutions to parameters, evaluates each candidate via OrcaFlexRunner, computes a penalized fitness (minimize max_t(stress) -> maximize 1/(stress+penalty)), logs per-evaluation records, prints per-eval and per-generation summaries, and writes results/best_solution.json and results/eval_log.csv.
• Engineering details: each evaluation gets an isolated run directory under results/cases, failed simulations are converted to a very poor fitness via an infinite-stress/large-penalty mapping, and damping writing supports configurable modes (same/fixed/separate).

Testing

• Performed static sanity check by compiling the new modules with python -m py_compile config.py metrics.py orcaflex_runner.py run_ga.py, which completed successfully.
• The code paths that interact with OrcFxAPI and runtime extraction were written defensively and will raise/return penalized results on OrcaFlex runtime errors; those runtime behaviors were not executed during compile-time validation.

Codex Task