Our research focuses on developing models to help ship designers during the early stage design of complex marine vessels. These models are being developed to help understand implications of design requirements on both the physical design as well as its operational performance. One specific area we are researching is on improving the design of vessel’s general arrangement to improve the performance of the underlying functions the vessels are designed to support. Our research relates to all complex marine vessel design, including: naval vessels, cruise ships, offshore service vessels, and others.
We are actively researching several models to support this effort. First, we have a packing based ship-synthesis model that can automatically generate thousands of low-detail ship concepts. This model is used to help study the relationships between ship design requirements, various ship layouts, projected costs, and overall effectiveness. Second, to help study the inherent uncertainty during early stage ship design, we are exploring the use of Markov processes to probabilistically assess design alternatives and their operational behavior. Our research is focused on better understanding the information generated by these models to better inform the designer. The goal is to make better decisions earlier on in the design process.
Contact:
Assistant Professor Austin A. Kana
a.a.kana@tudelft.nl