Automated Layout Generation and Design Rationale Capture to Support Early-Stage Complex Ship Design

Early-stage design of complex ships is of an iterative nature due to a coevolving problem definition and solution generation. In addition, design decisions are often made based on assumptions early on. To inform the stakeholder dialogue to support the definition of the design problem, designers need to gain insight into the technical feasibility, costs, and risks of requirements and potential design solutions. These aspects need to be addressed early on because of the lock-in of the concept design by, mostly, early decisions. In this situation, rework is considered a challenge because of the high cost of late design changes and might be reduced by providing designers with more accurate information on technical feasibility and risk. In this dissertation, the focus is on ship layout design. The level of detail of ship layouts is typically kept low to reduce rework during early-stage design. However, this limits how much insight into detailed design integration challenges can be obtained. Also, detailed design rationale, or design justification, is often not recorded, hampering designers in reconsidering past design decisions. In this dissertation, an automated layout design method (WARship GEneral ARrangement, WARGEAR) is developed and evaluated to support designers in quickly generating a series of detailed ship layouts. This helps designers obtain crucial insights into ship integration issues early on, potentially reducing costly rework later in the design process. Furthermore, a design rationale method (Ship Design Rationale Method, SDRM) is developed and coupled with a ship layout design tool to enable designers to capture design decisions in the context of the evolving concept design. The SDRM is consequently tested in small-scale design experiments, showing the benefits of explicitly considering design rationale during design work. The methods proposed in this dissertation allow designers, first, to identify potential sizing and integration issues in complex ship layouts, with less effort than required in current ship design practice. Second, the methods enable designers to capture their design reasoning in the context of the progressing concept design, which supports both current and future decision-making.Ship Design, Production and Operation

Integrating detailed layout generation with logistic performance assessment to improve layout insights in early stage warship design

These operational processes are of a logistical nature. Therefore these processes have a significant impact on the arrangement of these ships. Early stage design efforts are aimed to understand the interaction between the layout and the operational processes aboard these ships to gain timely design insights to inform the decision-making process.Therefore, sufficiently detailed concept designs are to be generated by naval architects and analysed to derisk requirements. While various tools have been developed to support naval architects in generating layouts with various level of detail, the detailed evaluation of operational performance is typically postponed to the stage that only little change to the design is possible. While various research developed tools to analyse operational performance, there is still a mismatch between the level of detail of layouts and the level of detail of operational performance analysis. Hence, the naval architect’s expertise is crucial to develop concept designs with acceptable operational performance.To address this mismatch between layout generation and evaluation, this paper proposes an integrated method that allows naval architects to concurrently generate and evaluate sufficiently detailed layouts. A test case is presented in which the proposed method is used to generate a detailed layout for a Landing Platform Dock (LPD) and evaluate this layout based on operational processes.The test case shows that the method can indeed be used to generate and evaluate detailed layouts of internal layout and process driven ships. However, the implementation of tooling for this method proved to be challenging and thus requires further attention. Nonetheless, the test case indicates that the proposed method will improve early stage ship design by helping naval architects to better understand the complex interrelation between layout and operational processes.Ship Design, Production and Operation

On-The-Fly Design Rationale to Support Real-Time Collaborative Naval Ship Layout Design

This paper presents a new design rationale methodology to support collaborative design decision-making during early stage complex ship design. The nature of collaborative design is described and the need and key challenges of design rationale capturing and reuse are identified.Subsequently, the methodology is developed to overcome these key challenges. A primary characteristic of the methodology is it’s integration with design tools to reduce intrusiveness and enhance usefulness during collaborative design sessions. Finally, a case study was used to demonstrate the usefulness of the developed design rationale ontology, a critical step in providing designers an improved capability to capture and reuse design rationale during collaborative design decisionmaking.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Ship Design, Production and Operation

Interactive Multi-Constrained System-To-Compartment Allocation To Support Real-Time Collaborative Complex Ship Layout Design Decision-Making

The development of concept designs during early warship design stages is essential to inform stakeholder dialogues on technical feasibility, affordability, and risk. One of the key aspects of warship concept designs is the layout of systems in the overall arrangement. The adoption of real-time design processes, such as concurrent design, require naval architects to use layout design tools in a more dynamic setting than during traditional design review session-based design processes. This paper investigates how ship layout design tools can be used in a real-time manner. It does so by considering the arrangement problem of allocating systems to compartments, subject to available and required area, global system position preferences, and preferred relative system positions. An existing ship layout design tool, WARGEAR, is extended to consider global and relative system constraints, and is integrated in a proposed method for the allocation of systems to compartments. Furthermore, a novel two-item correlation metric is developed to support designers in the analysis of the, typically large, design space. The metric can be used to identify conflicts and trade-offs between design parameters, as well as promising combinations of design parameters. Two case studies (8 and 89 systems respectively) are used to demonstrate and evaluate the proposed method. Based on these case studies, the calculation time or accuracy of the allocation method does not seem to be the main issue for collaborative design decision-making. Indeed, most effort is required for the analysis of the generated concept designs. Since this is not a problem as such, the real-time use of automated design tools to evaluate the impact of proposed design changes seems to be a promising way to enhance the effectiveness of collaborative ship layout design sessions.Ship Design, Production and Operation

Development and experimental testing of a collaborative design rationale method for early-stage ship layout design

Design rationale is a promising way of capturing design decisions and considerations for later retrieval and traceability to improve collaborative design decision-making. To achieve these perceived benefits for early-stage complex ship design, this paper first elaborates on the development of a proof-of-concept design rationale method. The method aims to aid ship designers in the continuous capturing and reuse of design rationale during the collaborative concept design process. Second, the setup and results of an experiment conducted with marine design students and with experts are discussed. This experiment shows how the developed design rationale method benefits collaborative design decision-making such that it leads to improved insight into design issues across the design team during a single design session.Ship Design, Production and Operation

WARGEAR: ‘Real time’ generation of detailed layout plans of surface warships during early stage design

Generating detailed warship layouts is crucial to check technical feasibility and performance consistent with emergent requirement elucidation during early stage design. However, generating feasible detailed layouts is a complex and time consuming task. Even today, detailed layout plans are often manually drawn using CAD software, taking up to 150 work hours to complete a single feasible layout plan, as found by the Netherlands Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO). As a result, the number of layout variations that can be generated and analysed is limited. This typically means that further detailed layout generation is postponed, increasing the risk of costly sizing and integration issues later in the design process. Therefore, a method that enables rapid insight into layout sizing issues is required. This paper elaborates on the mathematical working mechanisms of the WARship GEneral ARrangement (WARGEAR) tool, that has been developed to support naval architects in detailing ship arrangements to space level in a matter of minutes. Contributions are: (1) a probabilistic staircase placement algorithm, (2) a network-based approach combined with probabilistic selection for allocation of spaces to compartments, (3) the use of cross-correlation to quickly arrange spaces, and (4) a ‘carving’-based approach to ensure connectivity. A representative WARGEAR application case study is presented. This test shows how WARGEAR is able to confirm the feasibility of future warship arrangements at a high level of detail within minutes.Ship Design, Production and Operation

Design and feasibility of a 30- to 40-knot emission-free ferry

This paper explores the design and feasibility of a 200-passenger, 30- to 40-knot emission-free ferry as a potential variant of the traditionally powered Coastal Cruiser 200 ferry currently operating in the Chinese Pearl River Delta. The Pearl River Delta is one of China’s most densely urbanized regions and faces numerous social, health, and economic issues due to air pollution. In addition, globally, there are no currently-operating zero-emission ferries that, at minimum, sail at 30 knots and carry 200 passengers. To assess the feasibility of the new ferry, a two step approach was followed. First, an evaluation of efficiency improving measures, energy carriers, and propulsion systems was performed to assess the tradeoffs and identify early design choices. Second, to quantify the most technically feasible design, a technical parametric model was developed specifically for this case study. Results showed that the ferry is technically feasible using batteries, compressed hydrogen fuel cells, or liquid hydrogen fuel cells; however, each has its distinct advantages and disadvantages which influence the potential final viability. Despite the regional focus of the case study, results are applicable to all ferries with similar design requirements.Ship Design, Production and Operation

A case study into an automated detailed layout generation approach in early stage naval ship design

The Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) of the Netherlands Ministry of Defence identified that detailing warship layouts to space level of detail during the concept definition design phase is a complex and time consuming process. Currently it can take up to 150 man hours to complete a feasible general arrangement plan (GAP).Yet, these GAPs are crucial for balancing requirements and budget with technical feasible designs. Insufficient consideration of spatial details during concept definition increases the probability that sizing and integration issues will emerge later in the design process.This paper discusses the first steps undertaken to integrate a new layout generation tool, called WARGEAR (WARship GEneral ARrangement), into the DMO ship design process. WARGEAR is able to semi-automatically generate feasible and balanced detailed layouts in a matter of minutes, thus providing almost real-time feedback and design insight to naval architects. In this paper the issues of tool validation and user acceptance are addressed via a realistic warship design test case and a presentation of the test case results to a larger group of naval architects and senior management at the DMO respectively.The test case showed that WARGEAR is able to generate detailed layouts that compare well to GAPs manually generated by naval architects. The attendees at the presentation were generally positive, but also provided valuable feedback for further development of the WARGEAR tool and methodology. This shows the potential of WARGEAR to increase the speed of detailed layout generation to a matter of minutes and to improve the early stage design process by providing early insight into detailed layouts and their design drivers.Ship Design, Production and Operation

The Design Knowledge Management Square - a Framework for Early Stage Complex Ship Design

This paper presents and demonstrates a new design thinking framework for early stage complex ship design, called the Design Knowledge Management Square (DKMS) framework. The DKMS framework provides a structure that explicitly incorporates the collaborative nature of complex ship design, contrary to other models or frameworks that primarily focus on the technical integration of tools and methods to describe early stage complex ship design. The DKMS framework is applied to three case studies: 1) multi-disciplinary early stage design of complex ships, 2) the integration of concept design generation and analysis methods, and 3) the application of design rationale to support collaborative design decision-making. The case studies show that the DKMS framework provides added value by explicitly describing both the collaborative and technical nature of complex ship design. Thereby the framework helps to analyse, support, and understand complex ship design.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Ship Design, Production and Operation

Development and Lessons Learned of New Modular Ship Design Activities for Graduate Education During COVID

This paper describes two new modular ship design activities for graduate education at Delft University of Technology that have been developed during COVID. First, a new 2-hour hybrid format (in-person and virtual participation) game was designed to teach students modular design for offshore support vessels (OSVs). Second, an 8-week MSc-level ship design project was redeveloped to cover the design of a small fleet of modular OSVs for offshore wind. The paper discusses the drivers behind these new design educational activities, the details of the activities themselves, and concludes with lessons learned focused on improving graduate education for masters students studying ship design.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Ship Design, Production and Operation