Layout Analysis of Polar Expedition Cruise Ship in Early Stage Design

Abstract

The design of polar expedition cruise ship is not a trivial task to the naval architect due to the complex nature of the ship itself. Concept exploration are hereby required to improve the understanding of the design problem and identify its challenge as well as possible solutions. However, it is always difficult to generate the technically-feasible design solutions while still satisfying multiple and potentially conflicting performance criteria for the polar expedition cruise ship. There are currently two ways of optimizing the concept design: manual optimization and computer-optimization. The computer-based optimization, such as the Packing Approach developed by TU Delft, can semi-/automatically generate a set of design solutions. After the generation of these design solutions which are unknown in many performance behaviors, it is necessary to post-process them and increase the quality of those designs created from both optimization methods. Design rationale is an effective way to serve as qualitative metrics in post-processing the configuration layouts of the concept designs. However, the ambiguity and potential conflicting aspects within the design rationale are difficult to handle by the current post-processing method while fuzzy logic theory can be utilized to cope with the design problems involving subjective and ambiguity. Hence, it is proposed to develop a new methodology to better post-process the concept design of a polar expedition cruise ship.