Exploration and Investigation of Appropriate Tools to Facilitate Set-Based Design

摘要

A conscious effort is underway to explore the paradigm of Set-Based Design (SBD) for development of next generation US Navy ships. The Electric Ships Research and Development Consortium (ESRDC) funded through the Office of Naval Research (ONR) is responsible for developing a state-of-the-art design environment namely, Smart Ships Systems Design (S3D) wherein one focus area is to incorporate SBD functionalities. Impetus and efforts to develop SBD enablers, to be used within a concurrent and collaborative environment like S3D are in its infancy. The first step, is to explore viable well-established tools that are most suitable to perform the fundamental SBD task of feasible-design space reduction subject to user driven requirements and constraints. Once potential tools have been identified, the next step is to investigate their suitability for integration with S3D, with further studies into extent of necessity of modifications. This paper illustrates the use of full-factorial design analysis as one potential tool to facilitate SBD and discusses relevant aspects and future work. The benchmark medium voltage DC (MVDC) equipment considered for this study is the modular multilevel converter (MMC).