Towards optimal design of ship hull shapes

The recent increase in information technologies dedicated to optimal design, associated with the progress of the numerical tools for predicting ship hydrodynamic performances, allows significant improvement in ship design. A consortium of fourteen European partners – bringing together ship yards, model basins, consultants, research centres and universities – has therefore conducted a three years European R&D project (FANTASTIC) with the goal to improve the functional design of ship hull shapes. The following key issues were thus considered: parametric shape modelling was worked on through several complementary approaches, CFD tools and associated interfaces were enhanced to meet efficiency and robustness requirements, appropriate design space exploration and optimisation techniques were investigated. The resulting procedures where then implemented, for practical assessment purposes, in some end-users design environments, and a number of applications were undertaken.. Significant gains can be expected from this approach in design, in term of time used for performance analysis and explored range of design variations.