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


part, a recognition that the DNC was personally ultimately responsible for all the designs on his watch. He would have signed off the scrutinising the Book


design, by closely of Calculations, and as the


Technical Advisor to the Board of Admiralty was the true Design Authority. With the loss of that role, the demise of Books of Calcs and, indeed, Ship’s Covers and with much now delegated to contractors, one can just hope modern processes of Safety Case assurance, at least, provide an audit trail.


I am very delighted the paper has Mr Betts’


endorsement, though I don’t feel my design specific review could match Barnaby’s summary of the full range of the first century of Transaction papers. On the specific issue of submarine papers, several key papers were published in the early “Warship” conferences from the first


in 1983 [10]. Interestingly,


Jackson’s paper on USS Albacore [11], showing US Navy’s preparedness to publish in significant detail, having been matched in this


SNAME paper of 1960 by Aretzen and Mandel [12]. Mr Betts also asks for my view on his proposal that the best papers


from appropriate Institution published in conferences be the journal and the Transactions. In


principle this was the intention behind the award of the David Goodrich Prize for the best paper at the annual RINA “Warship” conference,


however there is


sometimes the desirability for papers, which may be written for a very specific conference audience, to be modified to make them more appropriate for the wider Institution. However, I cannot see that this should apply to descriptive papers on specific ship designs, which, as I comment at Section 4.3, now tend to be presented to conferences rather than to the wider profession through the Transactions – so the authors of such papers need to be encouraged to also submit them to the journal (and Transactions),


thereby enabling the profession to then debate such designs in written discussions such as this.


Professor Hopman and Mr Pattison both raise the issue of management in ship design – which I think, belatedly, now has a forum, with the intention that the first conference on Systems Engineering in Marine Design, held in October 2010, will be followed by further conferences on SE. I would also refer younger readers, in this regard, to the author’s 1993 Transaction paper on the management of warship design (see Section 4.7 last paragraph). This was written from the perspective of a UK MoD Warship Project Manager in the late 1980s, so one can hope one of my successors, in the UK MoD or industry, might be prepared to present an updated view.


Mr Pattison also raises the issue of high levels of uncertainty typifying naval design projects, Such projects usually evolve in a difficult “political” environment and this has always seemed to be the case – one has only to think of the circumstances of the Swedish Vasa in the 17th Century and the more recent UK “Short Fat Ship” saga. The other main issue for naval procurement is that


regard by the seminal these included Harry


I would also like to thank Dr McDonald for his comments and for drawing readers’ attention to the 2008 paper I authored with Dr Pawling (see Section 4.7). I considered that to be a seminal paper in that we described, I believe for the first time in open literature, not just a given concept design but


of Requirement Elucidation, for what remains a classic “wicked problem” in design methodology terms [13]. Mr Pattison also identifies further pertinent issues of low batch size, which in part leads to not having a prototype, and, increasingly, the low frequency of project ordering and completions, which means every design is different and has more and more expectations placed upon it. This also means each completed design having to incorporate the latest technologies and standards, while somehow so doing


with reduced ownership costs. procurement and through life


also the various


intermediate design solutions and the important choices taken for each one, in evolving a final concept design. That paper also provides any historian of recent design practice with a comprehensive list of references on the nature of preliminary ship design, going beyond those highlighted in this review of the RINA Transactions papers.


Dr McDonald also raises the issue as to how ship designers might acquire a greater level of creativity as well as a broad knowledge basis. Clearly the latter is part of achieving the former, however I also consider there is a vital issue if both academia and industry are to foster a creative approach to future ship design. Namely, in producing new design methods and tools to execute such approaches, it is essential that neither aspect inhibits a creative exploration in


preliminary design.


Fundamentally this means avoiding “black box” approaches, which are too often produced in CAD systems with no explanation of the particular system’s constraints and limitations.


If designers are to be


encouraged to explore widely (as was clearly the motivation behind Dr McDonald’s successful PhD [14]) then approaches such as the author’s DBB approach, which synthesises the configuration in 3-Dimensions, foster an essentially creative design philosophy. Such a visually based and designer


driven approach further


encourages a creative design exploration. This then becomes a basis for making design choices from as wide an investigation of potential options as possible.


REFERENCES


6. Raven, A & Roberts, J: “Hunt Class Destroyers”, RSV Publishing Inc. 1980.


7. Andrews, D J: “Philosophical Issues in the Practice of Engineering Design”, Philosophy of Engineering, Vol 1 of Proceedings, Royal Academy of Engineering, London, June 2010.


8. Burcher, R & Rydill, L: “Concepts in Submarine Design”, Cambridge UP, 1994.


A-60


©2011: The Royal Institution of Naval Architects


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