A universal ship design network

This thesis describes the developed software to manage design phase of ship's project lifecycle by using artificial intelligence with the participation of entire stakeholders of this lifecycle. The lifecycle of a ship project includes design phase, building phase, operation phase and recycling phase. There are links between these phases. On the other hand, there are different stakeholders inside of these phases such as owner of ship, class societies, national or international authorities, suppliers, shipyards, design offices and ship operators. A ship project must contain these phases and stakeholders. The main objective for the realization of a ship project is to obtain desired gain as an economic investment. This gain may be military force for a navy ship or economic profit for a merchant ship. Life time of a ship is longer than 25 years now and there are various studies to extend this life time. In this point, a ship is the long term economic investment. The long duration life cycle of ship starts with design phase and feasibility studies together. Every design decision affects the rest of life cycle of the ship. After the design phase, building phase begins and important point of this phase is to build the ship exactly the same with detailed designs in agreed time. Ending up building phase means operation phase. Operation phase is the longest period in the whole life cycle of a ship. Economic return of a ship investment is the subject of this phase so in this phase a ship should be run in the most profitable level. End of the ship operation period, the ship goes to recycling shipyard for disposal process and this generates the final economic return of the ship. Also, this phase is the finalization of a ship project as an economic investment. There are various stakeholders in the life cycle of a ship. They have conflicted objectives sometimes. For example, a ship owner wants minimum number of personnel in the operation of the ship to decrease crew cost. On the other hand, this situation increases the operational risk of a ship and this is an unwanted circumstance for international or national authorities. The management of a ship project is a complex task and resources should be used efficiently by whole stakeholders. The decision of any stakeholders can affect the others mostly. An artificial intelligence can help to manage a life cycle of ship project to increase efficiency for whole stakeholders by using holistic ship synthesis model. There are two main approaches for AI such as weak AI and strong AI. Strong AI is the simulation study of human intelligence by using computers. On the other hand, weak AI aims to solve industrial, scientific or other problems by using different intelligence approaches inspired by nature. In this study, a solution is investigated for ship design problem by using weak AI approaches on holistic ship synthesis model. Ship design basically is a combination of selection problem from finite space and exploration problem from infinite space, so evaluation of entire variables is impossible. At this point, AI should take rational decisions to find feasible or optimum solutions. AI will search suitable variables on a finite database and explore optimum variables by using holistic synthesis model. Also, AI could help to management of ship project in every phases of life cycle by using this synthesis model. Holistic synthesis model includes entire phases of a ship project from initial decision of design to disposal of ship. This model enables to evaluate all phases of ship together. Different and also conflicted objectives of stakeholders could cause to decrease total benefit of a ship in the end of her life time. Holistic view has gained popularity to avoid from this situation. Also, this view is kind of basement for decisions to manage ship life cycle. In this thesis, a framework is offered to manage lifecycle of ship by using AI. Design module of offered framework is realized for concept design of a container ship in the scope of this study. Also, this study will be foundation for further studies.