Minimize Work Content in Production and Maintenance and Reduce TOC Using Early-stage Structural Design Optimization

MAESTRO Marine LLC, Austal USA, NSWC Carderock Division, U.S. Coast Guard – Surface Forces Logistics Center, American Bureau of Shipping, Robert Keane – Ship Design USA, P. Jaquith & Associates, and SPAR Associates Inc.

November 2021 – November 2023 | INDUSTRY INVESTMENT: $1.2M | NSRP INVESTMENT $1.1M

The proposed NSRP RA Project addresses the problems of inadequate structural performance in-service, and of unsustainable structural maintenance costs at two levels which define the project’s general objectives: to enhance early-stage ship structural design for producibility and to improve in-service ship structural integrity assessment.

This project will implement into design and production planning software the accomplishments of NSRP RA Project 2017-443 and develop a new generation of ship structural design optimization tools for early-stage design that will result in:

• Assurance that structural design criteria are met while improving structural producibility and reducing design-build cycle time;

• Improving structural design and service-life assessment to reduce service-life corrosion, heavy weather damage, and structural fatigue cracking while mitigating excessive structural repair and maintenance costs and increasing ship availability;

• Provide comprehensive structural design space exploration capability for U.S. Navy and shipbuilder early-stage ship design processes resulting in robust structures with reduced Total Ownership Costs (TOC) of ships for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard.