Network Architecture Framework Applications with FOCUS-Compliant Ship Designs

Ongoing development of the US Navy's LEAPS data repository, research exploring the use of networks in ship system design by the Naval International Cooperative Opportunities in Science and Technology Program (NICOP), and tool development by the Electric Ship Research and Development Consortium (ESRDC) have provided an excellent opportunity to interface efforts to address preliminary distributed system design and analysis in early-stage ship design. This paper builds on the architecture framework and network-based methods by demonstrating new ways to process FOCUS-compliant data, develop network views, and analyze connectivity and flow of distributed ship systems. This framework decomposes system architecture into three primary views: physical, logical, and operational. Network-based tools targeted on these views and their intersections efficiently explore and analyze broad ranges in the ship system design space. These explorations generate knowledge, encourage innovation, and support the synthesis of affordable, effective ship designs. The authors present the findings of these efforts in consideration for future changes to the FOCUS Product Meta-Model to support integrated advanced network architecture analyses.