Towards the development of an automated ship arrangement design tool

Olsen, Christopher (1998) Towards the development of an automated ship arrangement design tool. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

[English] PDF (Migrated (PDF/A Conversion) from original format: (application/pdf)) - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. Download (41MB) [English] PDF - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. (Original Version)

Abstract

This thesis reviews Naval Architecture methods emphasizing the algorithmic and computer-based design of ships. It is shown that the problem of General Arrangements is critical to design synthesis and yet lacks the systemisarion found in other ship design problems. Design systemisarion improves the solution by reducing development periods and therefore costs, and by making more rime available for additional design iterations. The thesis addresses the systemisarion of the General Arrangement problem through the analogous Industrial Engineering problem of Facility Layout. -- While conceptually useful, the algorithms for computer-aided Facility Layout are limited primarily by their crude and out-dated representation of spatial information. For this reason, the bulk of this thesis describes a novel formulation for spatial data, replacing the traditional 2D block layout model. Named Semi-Solids, the representation employs planar mathematics to manipulate and identically model 3D faceted surfaces. The name implies a variation of a solid model because the unique formulation allows the computer to shape and position spatial objects without the direct guidance or interpretation of a human user. -- Microsoft's Access database software was used to create an efficient relational database for the storage of constraints and qualitative and quantitative data. Code for the manipulation of this data was developed using Microsoft's Visual Basic, and because Visual Basic and Access are closely related, data is easily shared by the database and the coded algorithm. In addition, it was possible to include a number of analytical functions specific to the database within the Visual Basic code. The database and the Semi-Solids code have been named Ship Arrangement Tool (ShipArrT) in preparation for additional work. -- The thesis concludes with two detailed research plans showing necessary and potential areas for future research. The first plan completes the Semi-Solids representation and evaluates its potential relative to other Solid Model representations. The second plan offers ideas and direction towards the completion of a modem and robust Facility Layout/General Arrangement algorithm.

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