6. Design of a Multi-Purpose Ocean Vessel

The fourth application case of the HOLISHIP project is the design of a Multi-Purpose Ocean Vessel with the support of the CAESES platform. A particular focus is given to early stages of ship design, to systems’ architecture and to mission requirements by use of management software (s/w) tools developed in the first phase of the HOLISHIP project (Papanikolaou A Holistic Approach to Ship Design. Springer 2019). The Multi-Purpose Ocean Vessel is designed to address a large variety of missions, from patrol and surveillance to search and rescue or pollution fighting operations. The missions of such a vessel depend strongly on the range, the region of operation, and the type of operations the ship owner ultimately wants to perform. “Off-the-shelf” ship designs meeting this type of requirements require intensive re-work, when they are not excluded altogether. To deliver the best possible design, the naval architect needs to reach a balance between the many requirements expressed by the ship owner and the complexity of the ship systems’ architecture. To achieve this aim, several variants need to be explored. In this chapter we present the design of a Multi-Purpose Ocean Vessel. We discuss the advantages of using “easy-to-use” early stage ship design tools combined with a more advanced, integrated CAD design platform, when exploring several variants. We also discuss the benefits of use of the architecture and requirements management tool SAR developed in HOLISHIP, in the context of complex ship design.