Developing innovative ship design methodologies

Maritime assets such as ships and offshore platforms platforms are typically associated with large investments and are not often built in large series. Where air, rail and road transport benefit from the scale effects of series production and considerable lead time of product development, this is mostly not the case for maritime products. Advanced product design needs to reflect constantly extended requirements and assure a flexible use and optimised performance over the entire life-cycle for varying operational conditions.

This calls for largely improved design tools including multi-objective and multi-disciplinary optimisation and, finally, virtual testing of the overall design and its components.

HOLISHIP (HOLIstic optimisation of SHIP design and operation for life-cycle) addresses these urgent industry needs by the development of innovative design methodologies, integrating design requirements (technical constraints, performance indicators, life-cycle cost, environmental impact) at an early design stage and for the entire life-cycle in an integrated design environment. Design integration will be implemented in practice by the development of integrated design s/w platforms and demonstrated by digital mock-ups and industry led application studies on the design and performance of ships, marine equipment and maritime assets in general.

More information about the project can be found at the project website.