Crashworthiness Optimization Method of Ship Structure under Multi-Working Conditions

Abstract

Numerous collision conditions can occur during ship operations, resulting in various consequences that require specific consideration for optimizing crashworthiness design. Existing studies have investigated crashworthiness design in ship structures; however, they often focus on single working conditions and do not comprehensively consider the diverse scenarios encountered during ship operations. To overcome this drawback, this paper proposes a novel method that addresses multi-working conditions and combines orthogonal testing with a backpropagation neural network (BPNN) to establish an efficient surrogate model for collision optimization. The accuracy of the BPNN was improved by introducing the genetic algorithm and Adam algorithm. The technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is introduced to formulate a multi-working condition optimization function. The crashworthiness of the ship structure is optimized using the sparrow search algorithm (SSA) while considering the constraint of lightweight design. The results demonstrate a substantial reduction in the objective functions for the optimized collision conditions. Moreover, the BPNN predicted values are in good agreement with the finite element simulation results, affirming the effectiveness of the proposed method in improving the crashworthiness of the ship structure and providing valuable guidance for engineering design.