Concept Exploration-an Approach to Small Warship Design.

摘要

This paper describes a versatile tool for the designer of small warships (1000-6000 tons), intended for use in the opening phase of the design process. Known as a concept exploration model, it provides an alternative approach to the usual immediate reliance on a basis ship, enabling the designer to explore a wider range of design concepts. To calculate performance and other design characteristics from an assumed set of ship dimensions, a simple algorithm has been developed using data derived from a number of successful small warships. This has been programmed for a high-speed computer in such a way that a search can be made over a wide range of assumed dimensions, to determine a hypothetical optimum ship for specified operational objectives. More importantly, the trends of design behaviour around that optimum are clearly illustrated. The concept exploration model is an advanced slide-rule, intended to relieve the designer of drudgery, and to provide him data in the quantities made possible by modern computers, yet in a form he can assimilate. In no way does the model relieve him of decision-making responsibility. Nor does it compete with more extensive computer-based methods developed for subsequent phases of the design process. (Author)