Helping bridge the gap between space-only arrangements and distributed system layouts

摘要

When designing ship general arrangements, there exists a gap in the level of analysis possible with early-stage compartment-only arrangements and with detail-stage distributed system and component layouts. Creating preliminary arrangements based on compartment location alone provides limited assurance that designs will remain feasible and successfully transition through detailed design. Additionally, space-only arrangements are less useful for topside design. Accounting for equipment and systems explicitly is one way to ease this transition and build confidence in a candidate design. However, a detailed analysis of interactions is not possible in the earliest stages of the design process due to the time required to build models, run computationally-expensive simulations, and consider the uncertainty of system-level characteristics. Equipment and interactions must be modeled at a level of detail appropriate to and available during the earliest design phases. The authors present a concept and multiagent-based prototype tool for compartment and major component arrangements that attempts to begin bridging this gap.