Automatic MultiDisciplinary Numerical Optimization (MDO) of a Frigate Ship Accounting Propulsion and Seakeeping Characteristics

Optimal design techniques have received considerable attention in many industrial contests: on contrast, the application of automatic optimization to the hydrodynamic ship design has not yet reached the same maturity. Nevertheless, numerical tools, combining together modern numerical fluid dynamics and optimization methods, can help the ship designer, enhancing the operational performances and reducing development and construction costs. In this paper, an application of Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) procedure for an hull form design is presented. Starting from a Parent Hull Form (PHF) of a naval surface ship, a multi-objective optimization problem is derived and solved in order to improve both resistance and seakeeping performances. An efficient and flexible procedure for the automatic geometry modification is applied, allowing a great variety of different hull shapes. Beside that, a set of design variables and related ranges of variation are chosen, together with a set of functional constraints. Finally, a set of feasible solution is defined and built, and CFD tools are applied to evaluate the different objective functions, hence obtaining the Pareto optimal set. A decision maker will order the Pareto optimal solutions. Experimental verification of the optimization procedure confirms the obtained numerical results.