On parametric modelling, digital siblings and ship design optimization

ABSTRACT

Ship design is inherently coupled with design optimization, namely the selection of the best out of many feasible solutions. In traditional ship design, optimization means taking the best out of 2–3 feasible solutions and it is up to the designer to decide based on the design specifications and his experience. The space of feasible design solutions is however huge, the relevant assessment criteria are plenty and complex, as are the many possible design constraints. After all, the assessment procedure should be rational and according to the contemporary state of the art. All this calls for a step change of the ship design process. The parametric modelling of ship design by use of digital siblings and multi-objective optimization, as they have been elaborated within the recent Horizon 2020 project HOLISHIP project (2016–2020), show the way ahead in response to present and future challenges of the maritime industry.

KEYWORDS:

• Parametric modelling
• digital siblings
• multi-objective optimization
• marine design

Acknowledgements

The presented work was partly funded by EU in the frame of the HORIZON 2020 project HOLISHIP, contract number 689074, www.holiship.eu. The contributions of 40 European maritime industry and research partners and of their representatives are greatly acknowledged. The author is indebted to his former Professor and Mentor Professor Horst Nowacki for his continuous inspiration and guidance over close to 5 decades. He was introduced by Nowacki into Computer Aided Ship Design (CASD) and Design Optimization in the 70s, but it took some years for the author and his students to focus their activities on this scientific field in the last 30 years. This was enabled by the conduct of a series of industry-driven, EU-funded research projects of synthetic nature, requiring a profound background in CASD in line with the drastic developments in computer hard and software (Industry 4.0). It paved the way to the development of advanced approaches to ship design, effectively responding to contemporary and future challenges of the maritime industry.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme [grant number 689074].