Towards A Design Simulator For Offshore Ship Bridges

The development of new design concepts for ship bridges on modern offshore vessels is a considerable challenge for engineering and design professions. Such ships perform advanced missions in extreme environmental conditions that are very different to those in which most design processes take place. Although site visits can help narrow this gap, such opportunities are limited by both funding and access constraints. We suggest the use of design simulators as tools for conceptual design, mediating collaboration between various disciplines and users. This paper reports on work in progress, in which we analyse and explore possibilities and challenges regarding the use of a simulator for the design of ship bridges, comparing the nature of conceptual design with the current use and capabilities of existing maritime simulators. Through this analysis, we suggest there is potential for combining training simulators with tools and techniques from conceptual design processes in ship bridge design. We also discuss some challenges regarding the effective use of simulators as a design tool.