Improvement of ship design practice using a 3D CAD model of a hull structure

At the initial stage of ship design, a hull structural model, that is, a 3D CAD model of a hull structure is not generated by the existing shipbuilding CAD system because it is time-consuming and requires much effort. Without the hull structural model, a designer must manually calculate the production material information of a building block by using 2D drawings, parent ship data, and design experiences at the initial planning and scheduling stages. At the initial stage of hull structural analysis, the designer manually generates a structural analysis model, that is, a finite element model of the hull structure. Moreover, the piping model, that is a 3D CAD model of the pipes in the hull structure, is generated independently of the hull structural model at the detailed design stage. To lighten the burden imposed on the designer, we developed an initial hull structural modeling system in our previous study. Using this system, a designer can rapidly and easily generate the hull structural model at the initial stage of design. In this study, the generation methods of the production material information of a building block, the structural analysis model, and the piping model based on the hull structural model are developed. The applicability of the developed methods are demonstrated by applying them to a deadweight 300,000 ton very large crude oil carrier (VLCC). The results show that the developed methods can quickly generate the corresponding information or models at the initial design stage.