Ship Optimisation with Distant Application Tools

Abstract

This paper presents the implementation of a distributed optimisation method applied to the ship design domain. The approach takes into account the present industrial requirements linked to the distant work and the concurrent engineering deployment. The increasing economic competition of all industrial markets and the growing complexity of the engineering problems lead to a progressive specialisation and distribution of expertise, tools and work sites. Most industrial sectors manage this fragmentation using the concurrent engineering approach based on distant shared tools and databases. This paper presents the implementation of a multi-objective optimisation process in a concurrent engineering context. Our study aims to demonstrate that when multi-objective optimisation is carried out in a distributed manner it can provide a powerful toll for concurrent product design. To illustrate our methodology, three European companies’ collaboration on the optimisation of a ship hull is described. The results of this real scale experiment suggest that significant improvements of the present industrial design method are possible.