Applying Feature-based Segment Method to Estimate Steel Weight of Ships with the Hull Form Features

• Main Authors: Ping-HsuanLu, 呂秉軒
• Other Authors: Heiu-Jou Shaw
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/98244296641249699679

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 系統及船舶機電工程學系 === 104 === Accurate estimation of the weight of a ship’s steel material at the initial design stage can enable the shipyard to approximate the ship’s construction cost, thereby improving its likelihood of signing a contract with the ship owner. The feature-based segment estimation (FSE) method, which is a method of estimating steel weight, can accurately estimate a ship’s weight by dividing it into various segments. However, the FSE method yields relatively large errors when used to estimate the weight of a ship with a forepeak, an aft peak and a deckhouse that vary considerably in size between their respective various sections. Therefore, to solve this problem, this study employs the FSE method in combination with the hull form feature. Previous studies have demonstrated that integration of the principal dimensions and the hull form at the initial design stage can improve the effectiveness of the preliminary ship design. Accordingly, in addition to the ship’s total length, width and depth and hull length, the hull form is included in the analysis parameters involved in the FSE method. The hull form is obtained from the longitudinal sectional area of the block arrangement and used as the characteristic parameter of the hull form to improve accuracy in estimating a hull that varies considerably in size between different sections. The hull form feature-based weight estimation results show that the FSE method combined with the hull form feature yields an estimation error of 3%, 5% and 5% for the forepeak, aft peak and deckhouse, respectively, compared to the estimation error of the original FSE method of 7%, 10% and 6%, respectively. This suggests that the use of the hull form feature can improve weight estimation. Finally, this study proposes a quick method for producing a rough general arrangement. A hull form feature similar to the estimation results can be extracted by putting the steel material weight estimation results into the hull form database. In this manner, the hull form required by the ship owner can be established in a timely fashion, providing the shipyard and the ship owner with a new reference for selecting the ship type and configuring the hull form at the initial design stage.