Trans RINA, Vol 153, Part A1, Intl J Maritime Eng, 2011 Jan-Mar


is still one of the most demanding design and engineering challenges which organisations undertake. I have often thought that, together with the significant complexity of many ship design and build projects, the high levels of uncertainty which pervade a typical such project result in a quite uniquely demanding industry.


I would be


interested in the author’s views about how uncertainty influences our projects and what fundamental factors drive it. For me, factors such as small batch sizes and the low frequency of projects have a critical influence on how the business works, or can work.


The variety of ship types covered in the papers produced since 1960 is quite bewildering, ranging as it does from aircraft carriers and cruise ships to fishing vessels and lifeboats.


accommodation, escape,


Furthermore, the range of topics dealt with; fluid dynamics, Computer


Aided Design, ambiguity, etc. etc. etc. illustrate the vast number of influences on the design and construction of our


products. One topic which seems a little


underrepresented in the paper is that of the management of our projects. I am aware that approaches to managing ship design and build projects vary significantly from sector to sector and no doubt from nation to nation. Does the author believe that more papers on this topic would benefit the industry?


T P McDonald, University College London, UK


I would like to thank Professor Andrews for presenting a succinct paper describing the varied ship design related articles, published by the Institution over the last 150 years, and their contributions to developing the field of ship design research. I am currently completing a PhD focused upon this field (and must declare that Professor Andrews has acted as one of my supervisors). I feel this paper provides an important contribution as it tracks the field’s historical development. I was interested to note the progression from the early papers presenting and summarising novel designs,


via the papers exploring


specific design issues, to the more recent papers highlighting different design techniques, methods and approaches.


I hope that the inclusion of Andrews and Pawling’s 2008 paper


Design” provides an indication of a possible new direction for


detailing “A Case Study in Preliminary Ship the next 50 years;


Constructor Commander Dicks has posed three very significant questions to both myself and Dr Buxton, as author of the companion “150th” paper. I will endeavour to answer them from the ship design perspective.


The first question is on the changing role of the naval architect and whether we are appropriately preparing naval architects for it. Cdr Dicks is sceptical on the emphasis devoted to complex analysis and suggests greater focus on design theory and practice. The issue of complex analysis seems to me to be two fold: there is a need for a professional naval architect to understand the core theory and assumptions in methods like FEM and CFD so that


they both use them appropriately


themselves and can sensible interrogate result produced by deeper experts; secondly, it is awareness of the underlying theory behind


“advanced methods applied to ship


topics”, such as probabilistic strength and


seakeeping, and accepting others with


knowledge of (say) manoeuvring theory and lifting line methods that mean the ship designer is more than a mere technician applying codes


use of encouraging those


proposing different design approaches to better describe how their approach is applied and hence develop links back to specific design issues and, therefore, promoting the development of improved design solutions. I am confident that other authors will take up the challenge of producing similar work in the future.


Finally, I would like to end by asking Professor Andrews where does he (as an individual whose career has spanned both academia and industry/government projects) see that the primary effort lies in ensuring


advanced methods. This is the basis of the “extra knowledge and skills” acquired in a typical MEng or MSc, above and beyond the basic BEng. Acquiring design skills is primarily a heuristic process, with some background theory in general and on ship design issues and methods. That background is best conveyed by cycling through, as temporary course staff, ship design practitioners rather than pure theoreticians, an approach which both the US Navy and the UK “naval naval architects” adopt at M.I.T and UCL, respectively. The heuristic element, learnt through a plausibly realistic ship design exercise and overseen by the “seconded” practitioners, both exposes the young naval architects to the challenge of complex design and enables some of their recently acquired skills in complex analysis to be applied to their burgeoning designs. Whether this noticeably expensive overhead can be applied to the generality of advanced naval architecture courses depends, possibly, on both adopting (in the UK) the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Visiting Professorship scheme (www.raeng.org) and finding practitioners prepared to make a significant annual commitment, when the pool of such expertise is frightening diminishing. Technology development skills, by which I presume Cdr Dicks means those of a more managerial or systems engineering nature, can only be introduced in such a course but are more readily acquired as part of continual learning/CPD, which is going to become more necessary in a globally competitive career environment.


The issue of further “S”s to “S5” has been raised before, with Survivability, Sustainability, Supportability, Signatures (and indeed further merchant ship relevant “S”s by Dr Buxton in his comments) as well as Safety being suggested. I think


this misses the essential


difference between Style and the first four Ss. The latter are essentially the traditional sub-disciplines of the


tomorrow’s naval architects acquire both more creativity and a broad knowledge base?


AUTHORS’ RESPONSE


A-58


©2011: The Royal Institution of Naval Architects


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74