Ship design 10-7-19

Ship design

Design is a creative iterative process serving a bounded objective.

This definition of design brings out the four essential features of engineering design which serve well as the divisions of this chapter. Objective there must be, even if like Michaelangelo’s it is simply ‘To please God’. Naval architects require the discipline of a well-defined objective, if their creation is to answer properly the owner’s need. Moreover, it has to be bounded; that is to say the limits to which the designer may go need stating. It has become common to address a sysytem of which the ship is but a part; a sciance known these days as systems engineering. Having defined what it is the designer is to address and the limits within which to work, the creative activity can start. This is nomally a circular process, a first shot, corrected and re-created often many times until it satisfies the objective. It is interctive, as will later be clear.

Students must not be dismayed that they yet denied the chance to apply their hard-won skills to this satisfying aspect of their profession. Such skills must be applied in a constructive and disciplined manner if they are not to be wasted. Students will find that a disciplined framwork
will not only enrich their natural creative ability but provide an opportunity for the computer to assist them. Data bases, full of successul history can provide them with a firm start to the process of converging upon the best solutions.

It is first necessary to be clear about the role of the naval architect throughout the design process, because it changes with time. The earliest stages are generally a debate with the owner, proposing various ways in which the owner’s wishes could be fulfilled, matching the operations envisaged to the investment that would be necessary to perform them. In the case of maritime trading this would e suggesting many different possible transportation sysytems and assessing their profitability and chance of success. In the case of military operations it would consit of propposing many different ways of
achieving offrnsive or defensive operations and the cost and effectiveness of each solution. These early studies somprise concept design or conceptual design, sometimes called pre-feasibllity. They consist of a lively debate among all those who have a contribution to make, designers, operators, econmomists and many others all directing their creative thoughts towards an objective declared by the owner who may be atrader or a military commander representing a government. The result of this debate is in outline a few promising idera whichlead into a phase of development usually known as feasibility study.