Existing Ship Design Methodologies

The design of ships is an inherently complex process. This complexity is significantly increased when the particular ship being designed is a naval surface combatant. Naval combatant designers, or more appropriately, design teams, must not only address the factors common to all seagoing vessels such as hull form, propulsion, and maneuverability, but additionally must consider the selection, placement, and interaction of sophisticated weapons systems and sensors. The ship design process is traditionally viewed as a highly coupled collection of interrelated physical attributes often determined in an ad hoc fashion. Therefore, lack of understanding and documenting the design progression frequently necessitates modification of a completely developed, functionally acceptable portion of the ship because of its adverse effect on other functionally unrelated parameters. This paper proposes a methodology based on axiomatic design principles that strives to eliminate the currently accepted iterative nature of concept level ship design. By implementing this approach, the ship design process follows a repeatable structured format in which functional relationships between physical parameters are mapped, documented, and controlled. The AAD method is applied to a ship synthesis model, and a new ship design process is defined and coded to illustrate the utility of the method.