Virtual Prototyping in Ship Design

Simulation and Virtual Prototyping got into many difficulties before becoming a part of the traditional ship building processes. However the greater complexity of constructions and boarded systems demand more complete design verifications. Even if a boarded system is analogous to the land one, it must stand the high intensity of the induced ship motion. The forecasting of the ship motions has always been a problem of the ship design, and a lot of software was developed in the past to study this topic. On the other side the analysis of the systems/mechanisms subjected to this movements is very challenging, so that these simulations are often approximated by elementary shapes of motion. The task of this study was to simulate an apparatus without simplifying the environment in which it operates. The object of our investigation was a bridge-crane arranged to the well-dock of a new amphibious ship. This crane will be used during the in-docking phase of a 42 tons landing craft, and the embarkation/disembarkation tasks must be operative till sea state four. From a dynamic point of view this system is not particularly complex, but what is meaningful is the integration of two different calculation codes : SMP (Ship Motion Program) , which supplies the ship motions, and ADAMS, which was able to accept them in its Body Motion environment.