The influence of the operational scenarios on the propulsion system selection in the preliminary naval ship design  

CF A. Menna

Italian Navy

F. Perra

Orizzonte Sistemi Navali

M. Altosole, M. Figari, F. Piastra

Department of  Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications Engineering and Naval Architecture (DITEN)

Polytechnic School, University of Genoa, Genova, Italy

ABSTRACT

The concept phase of the naval ship design process is traditionally based on experience, on the balanced application of project constraints, on empirical rules and experimental information.

A key factor that greatly affect the design is the scenario the ship will undertake and relevant mission success measures.

The aim of the design is to find a feasible solution with respect to different needs: operational effectiveness, speed, seakeeping, stability and maneuverability, lifecycle cost. During the Early Stage Ship Design (ESSD) these elements need to be evaluated by means of appropriate models and tradeoff studies among multiple alternatives have to be performed.

The present paper is focussed on the propulsion system selection and its influence on the ship effectiveness in different scenarios. The authors developed a numerical methodology to derive main propulsion system characteristics (power, consumption, weight, volume) starting from few input available in the early stage of naval ship design. For a given main ship dimensions (L, B, T), different operational scenarios will be analysed and ship effectiveness evaluated for different propulsion system choice.

The work is part of a research activity performed by a collaborative team of researchers from Italian Navy, Orizzonte Sistemi Navali (OSN), Genoa University Polytechnic School (DIBRIS, Dept. of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and Systems Engineering,  and DITEN, Department of Electrical, Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering and Naval architecture).