Derivation of Power System Module Metamodels for Early Shipboard Design Explorations

The U.S. Navy is currently challenged to develop new ship designs under compressed schedules. These ship designs must necessarily incorporate emerging technologies for high power energy conversion in order to enable smaller ship designs with a high degree of electrification and next generation electrified weapons. One way this challenge is being addressed is through development of collaborative concurrent design environment that allows for design space exploration across a wide range of implementation options. The most significant challenge is assurance of a dependable power and energy service via the shipboard Integrated Power and Energy System (IPES). The IPES is largely made up of interconnected power conversion and distribution equipment with allocated functionalities in order to meet demanding Quality of Power, Quality of Service and Survivability requirements. Feasible IPES implementations must fit within the ship hull constraints and must not violate limitations on ship displacement. This Thesis applies the theory of dependability to the use of scalable metamodels for power conversion and distribution equipment within a collaborative concurrent design environment to enable total ship set-based design outcomes that result implementable design specifications for procurement of equipment to be used in the final ship implementation

Derivation of Power System Module Metamodels for Early Shipboard Design Explorations

The U.S. Navy is currently challenged to develop new ship designs under compressed schedules. These ship designs must necessarily incorporate emerging technologies for high power energy conversion in order to enable smaller ship designs with a high degree of electrification and next generation electrified weapons. One way this challenge is being addressed is through development of collaborative concurrent design environment that allows for design space exploration across a wide range of implementation options. The most significant challenge is assurance of a dependable power and energy service via the shipboard Integrated Power and Energy System (IPES). The IPES is largely made up of interconnected power conversion and distribution equipment with allocated functionalities in order to meet demanding Quality of Power, Quality of Service and Survivability requirements. Feasible IPES implementations must fit within the ship hull constraints and must not violate limitations on ship displacement. This Thesis applies the theory of dependability to the use of scalable metamodels for power conversion and distribution equipment within a collaborative concurrent design environment to enable total ship set-based design outcomes that result implementable design specifications for procurement of equipment to be used in the final ship implementation

HYDRA: multipurpose ship designs in engineering and education

The cornerstone of post-graduate naval architecture and marine engineering education at UCL is the Ship Design Exercise. This three-month full-time project sees students placed in small, multi-disciplinary teams and challenged with the concept design of a new vessel based on broad outline require-ments provided by the academic staff. This exercise exemplifies the use of design as an integrative teaching method, allowing engineering students to place their academic understanding of technical subjects in a whole-ship concept. This paper describes an innovative design – HYDRA – featuring a single core vessel capable of adaption during build to take on several military or civilian roles. This paper not only describes the technical aspects of the design solution itself, but also discusses the educational implications of setting students the challenge of designing ships to meet multiple, sometimes contradictory requirements. In addition to aligning well with some modern trends in ship design and construction, this type of problem is seen to offer potential benefits in engineering education. These benefits are discussed, in addition to the potential complications they bring to various aspects of the design exercise

Reducing Work Content in Early Stage Naval Ship Designs

Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Progra

Reducing Work Content in Early Stage Naval Ship Designs

Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Progra

Mahan\u27s Forebears; The Debate over Maritime Strategy, 1868-1883

Between 1868 and 1883, a number of American naval officers of various ranks, lamenting their service\u27s decline, began to promote advanced military ship designs and equipment through organized publicity. They wrote articles, held lectures, and formed organizations that eventually helped to persuade Congress and the Department iof the Navy to re-create the fleet

Seeing arrangements as connections: The use of networks in analysing existing and historical ship designs

A growing trend in computer aided ship design, particularly in the early stages, is the utilisation of approaches and numerical methods developed in other disciplines. Examples include genetic algorithms, financial methods of risk assessment and the use of network science. Networks can provide an abstract mathematical representation of many types of connected features, properties and information, such that the associated network analysis metrics and approaches can offer new ways of investigating and evaluating ship designs. This paper reports on ongoing UCL investigations into the application of network science in assisting human analysis of the general arrangements of existing ship designs. This work includes designs of complex service vessels (research vessels) as a comparison with naval ships and makes use of freely available network analysis software. This project makes use of the experience in naval vessel concept design at UCL by enabling a comparison of expert judgement and interpretation of designs with the quantitative network metrics. This paper describes the network analysis approach adopted, the findings for the arrangements analysed, and also discusses the future work required to further the approach

Designing Future Ships for Significantly Lower Energy Consumption

The likelihood of both increases in, and volatility of, the cost of conventional fuel in the coming decades combined with more stringent emission regulations, means that ships in the future will have to be significantly more efficient and make use of alternative sources of energy. Considering the regulatory aspect, it has been claimed that, if the IMO were to reduce international shipping’s carbon dioxide emissions to those consistent with limiting anthropogenic climate change to 2 degrees of warming, then ships in 2050 would have to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 75-90% compared to ships in 2012. To investigate what might be the appropriate mix of technologies and operational approaches for future ship designs the “Whole Ship Model” (WSM) was developed, which is a holistic ship design tool, primarily developed at UCL, that can generate many ship design options with different design, technology and fuel combinations. The Whole Ship model can be used to explore different arrangements and uses of energy efficiency measures on container ships, bulk carriers and tankers evaluating their performance over an operating profile. This paper will initially present some results from the Whole Ship Model, evaluating the potential performance of present-day ships and technologies and will then compare this to technically feasible future ship designs that use contemporary or near-term technology to achieve very high reductions in carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption

Energy-efficient through-life smart design, manufacturing and operation of ships in an industry 4.0 environment

Energy efficiency is an important factor in the marine industry to help reduce manufacturing and operational costs as well as the impact on the environment. In the face of global competition and cost-effectiveness, ship builders and operators today require a major overhaul in the entire ship design, manufacturing and operation process to achieve these goals. This paper highlights smart design, manufacturing and operation as the way forward in an industry 4.0 (i4) era from designing for better energy efficiency to more intelligent ships and smart operation through-life. The paper (i) draws parallels between ship design, manufacturing and operation processes, (ii) identifies key challenges facing such a temporal (lifecycle) as opposed to spatial (mass) products, (iii) proposes a closed-loop ship lifecycle framework and (iv) outlines potential future directions in smart design, manufacturing and operation of ships in an industry 4.0 value chain so as to achieve more energy-efficient vessels. Through computational intelligence and cyber-physical integration, we envision that industry 4.0 can revolutionise ship design, manufacturing and operations in a smart product through-life process in the near future

SAFEDOR – the implementation of risk-based ship design and approval

The integrated project SAFEDOR has been completed in spring 2009 and this paper summarizes the achievements. SAFEDOR has been focusing work on the development of a risk-based regulatory framework, a risk-based design framework, advanced probabilistic simulation tools and their integration as well as a series of application examples. The paper outlines the elements of the risk-based regulatory framework incl. approval process, risk evaluation criteria, requirements for documentation and key personnel as well as onboard documentation. Novel risk-based simulation tools and their integration into a design environment are discussed. The paper also highlights the innovative ship designs developed within SAFEDOR and points towards possible future applications. Eventually, future research on risk-based approaches is outlined