From Functional Arrangement to Vulnerability Assessment: Automating Naval Ship Design for Enhanced Survivability Analysis

A novel method has been developed to rapidly assess vulnerability of a new platform which has been generated through a packing approach. This method quickly transforms a volumetric packing model into a surface model that includes ship structure including doors and hatches, mission critical systems and the crew. A weapon model was developed taking into account the unpredictability of a threat by generating multiple scenarios with the Monte Carlo method. Based on this set of simulations vulnerability measures can be introduced in a weight efficient manner. This in turn will allow the naval architects to design safer naval ships in balance with other requirements. This paper describes the process of vulnerability analysis in early ship designs and the feedback loop of conclusions to the designers.