Design for safety with minimum life-cycle cost

Abstract

The paper outlines an approach to multidisciplinary ship design via a software platform maintaining a holistic view on the overall ship quality. The platform integrates design and first-principles design evaluation tools that estimate performance indices of risk, costs, earnings and ship functionality. The platform has built-in mechanisms that determine dominant design parameters, derive parametric models and perform gradual optimisation of constantly updated response surfaces, thus guiding designers towards cost-effective design solutions. The applications aspects and results of the platform are also presented here. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.