Reducing uncertainty in subdivision optimization

Puisa, Romanas and Tsakalakis, Nikolaos and Vassalos, Dracos (2012) Reducing uncertainty in subdivision optimization. Journal of Shipping and Ocean Engineering, 2. pp. 18-27. ISSN 2159-5879

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Abstract

Design of watertight subdivision inherently involves its optimization with the objective to increase the index “A” above its minimum required value. In view of a big popularity of probabilistic search methods such as genetic algorithms, this task is intrinsically time consuming. Thus, even when an optimal subdivision layout (i.e. topology) is determined, it can be found that the optimal bulkhead positions can be a great challenge time-wise, often forcing designers to satisfy with suboptimal solutions. The fundamental reason why this happens is that the nature of the optimized function (e.g., index “A” as a function of bulkhead positions) is unknown and hence it has no effect upon the choice of optimization strategy, which therefore reflects subjective but not factual preferences. In this paper we study the nature of functional dependency between the subdivision index and bulkhead positions, as a simplest case, and indicate pertinent optimization strategies that consequently reduce the optimization time. In our study we use a cruise ship model to demonstrate the application results of our findings.