Incorporation of control systems in early stage conceptual ship designs

The objective of this paper is to establish a methodology to evaluate the performance of candidate ship concept designs in the context of mission scenarios. To automate the design evaluation, it is necessary to properly set in an automated way system variables that identify the desired operating point. This is accomplished by defining a constrained static optimization problem. A cost function is minimized in the presence of system constraints to determine the control variable values that provide the optimal ship operation for the given scenario. An example system is analyzed using two different algorithms and the optimal operating point for a specific mission scenario is determined. Design requirements and future efforts are discussed.