Integration of VTB Pro with Ship Design Tools

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Integration of VTB Pro with Ship Design Tools

• Roger Dougal, Blake Langland, Eugene Solodovnik,
  Earnie Broughton
• University Of South Carolina
• VTB Users And Developers Conference
• September 20, 2005

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VTB Pro Goals
To move beyond the current capabilities of VTB
and create a simulation environment to better
support the Navy, researchers in the electric
ship consortium, and industry during the ship
design processes.
Provide a testing environment which can integrate
with tools already in use by the Navy and ship
building industry Provide capabilities that
allow the design of systems that comply with
processes being advocated by the Navy and
followed by industry.
Capability to quickly evaluate and share new
concepts and designs with ONR, other
researchers, and members of the ship building
community across engineering disciplines within a
single simulation environment.
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Concept Phase

• Not much detail is known below system level
  requirements
• Arrive at system level design using tradeoffs
  from performance requirement intended ship
  function
• Maximum speed
• Hull displacement
• Noise requirements
• etc
• Performance tradeoffs are used to determine power
  source, armaments, hull shape, estimated weight,
  cost, etc
• Models give probable behaviors
• Hierarchical models that lack information to form
  physics based models
• Conduct capability vs. cost vs. risk trade-offs
• Identify major technical risks
• Define set of alternative whole-ship solutions

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Preliminary Phase

• Arrive at sub-system design through trade-offs
• More information is available at this stage
• Expanded resolution of models used in concept
  phase
• Focus on individual component behaviors vs. unit
  behavior

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Detail Design Phase

• Arrive at component level design through
  trade-off studies
• Detailed information is available about all
  design aspects of the system
• All types of models can be used, physics based
  models, hardware in the loop, etc
• Simulation performance can become an issue so it
  may be necessary to allow different degrees of
  resolution in the models

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Production Phase

• Produce, integrate, and validate the system
• Live and virtual simulations can be used to
  validate the real system and simulation models
• Original constructive models are less useful but
  might need to be updated to support further
  system evolution

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Goals of the design process

• Optimize Ship Performance
• Improve Quality
• Reduce Time to Deliver or Schedule
• Reduce design cycle time
• Reduce cost of system acquisition, development,
  and maintenance

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Examples of Analysis for Stakeholders

• Time to build system
• Cost
• Manning requirements
• Complexity of design
• Quantify and identify risk
• Performance
• Military Considerations
• Effectiveness
• Versatility
• Technical Considerations
• Balance
• Operability
• Maintainability
• Interoperability
• Survivability
• Changeability
• Ruggedness

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Many tools involved

• Large number of engineering disciplines involved
  with their own simulation tools
• A particular tool may not address the needs of
  the entire design cycle from concept to
  production
• A particular analysis tool is unlikely to address
  all questions posed by the various stakeholders

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Need Integrated Design Process
Sharing of design specifications between tool
sets eliminates redundancy Reduce information
flow delays between different engineering teams
(make decisions quicker) Reduce approval
delays Feedback processes that reduce design
iteration, error propagation and manage design
change. Other teams that can be affected by a
design change made by one team should be
notified. Design team should be focused on the
best system design not integration issues
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Need Integrated Design Process

• Use of open systems architecture.
• Reduce communication complexity
• Move from (n X n) to (n 1)
• Multi-disciplinary teams examine all aspects of
  the design as early as possible in the design
  process.
• Cause developers, from outset, to consider all
  elements of product life cycle from conception
  through disposal, including quality, cost,
  schedule and user requirements
• Controlled design workflow
• Seamless transfer of data between design
  practices.
• Design output that is compatible with input
  needed by the next phase (detailed design to
  manufacturing)

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Need Integrated Design Process

• Integrate legacy design and analysis tools
• Enable team communication
• Accurate quantify the design uncertainty and
  improve confidence
• Extensible migration path forward to
  incorporate new tools and replacement of obsolete
  tools

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LEAPS (NSWC)

• The Leading Edge Architecture for Prototyping
  Systems (LEAPS)
• software enables an engineering analysis team to
• evaluate a products design
• verify its capabilities against customer
  requirements
• determine manufacturability, and provide
  value-added feedback.
• Tool for supporting conceptual and preliminary
  ship design and analysis integration.
• Due to the complexity and diversity of naval ship
  design and analysis, the LEAPS architecture takes
  a meta model approach to product model
  development.
• LEAPS is being designed to establish an interface
  for analysis codes to access product models over
  long periods of time

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LEAPS (NSWC)

• LEAPS is a NSWC Carderock Division developed
  environment to integrate modeling and analysis
  tools. The primary object of LEAPS is to enable
  rapid and trusted evaluation of design
  alternatives by
• Providing more effective views of the ship design
  process.
• Involving discipline specialists in the overall
  tradeoff process.
• Minimizing remodeling for analysis tools.
• Improve timeliness, accuracy, and consistency in
  analysis.
• A key element of LEAPS is the Focus Object Model
  that provides a comprehensive product model for
  naval ship acquisitions. The LEAPS environment
  includes
• A generic object-oriented class structure for
  data modeling.
• An API for accessing the data model.
• Translators between the Focus Object Model and
  existing modeling and analysis tools used in
  naval design and acquisition.
• Other infrastructure tools such as viewers,
  editors, input and output utilities.

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ASSET (NSWC)

• The Advanced Surface Ship Evaluation Tool (ASSET)
• A family of interactive computer programs for use
  in the exploratory and feasibility design phases
  of naval surface ships.
• A family of ship design synthesis computer
  programs
• ASSET is used in the exploratory and feasibility
  design phases of naval surface ships. The primary
  purpose of ASSET is to perform the initial
  prediction of ship physical and performance
  characteristics based on mission requirements and
  to do so with sufficient fidelity so that the
  total ship implications of subsystem level design
  and technology decisions are evident.

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ASSET (NSWC)

• ASSET provides the initial population of the
  Focus Object Model. The ASSET to LEAPS
  translator generates and complete surface models
  from the ASSET geometry and then populates the
  Focus objects and relationships in the areas of
• Ship Requirements
• Total Ship Characteristics
• Molded Forms and Arrangements
• Systems and Components

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FastShip (Anteon / Proteus)

• FastShip is a commercially developed and marketed
  ship surface modeling tool from Proteus
  Engineering.
• The ASSET / FastShip interface allows FastShip to
  create the initial hull form for use in ASSET.
• In ASSET, the user defines the hull basic
  characteristics, such as length, beam,
  displacement, etc.
• Once FastShip has modified the hull form to match
  the ASSET specifications, FastShip sends the hull
  offsets back to ASSET.
• FlagShip can then provide
• Cost estimation
• Fuel consumption estimation
• Propulsion system

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Integration Effort
Integrating and performing a design cycle
iteration with ASSET (NSWC) and Flag Ship Design
(Anteon-Proteus) using LEAPS (NSWC) as the
central repository. Integration effort with
LEAPS consists of expressing VTB Pro systems,
subsystems and components in the LEAPS meta-model
format. VTB Pro will be able to extract and
insert system, subsystem, component, and analysis
information inside of LEAPS. This opens the door
for other tools to work with VTB Pro via LEAPS.
Support for ship specific views, processes, and
design activities. Ability to import ship hull
models from Flag Ship. Working with Northrop
Grumman to incorporate feedback and user
requirements for engineering and business
processes.
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Integration Scenario
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LEAPS Translator

• Common component library
• Common language for describing components
  (metadata)
• Schematic itself
• Connectivity
• Analysis results
• Power vs operating condition
• Power system transient during crash ahead and
  crash stop

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Notional Surface Combatant MV Bus One-Line
Ship Service Load Models (Base Load, PGM
Ancillaries, and Cooling Loads)
Ship / Propulsion Load Model
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Notional Surface Combatant Operational
Conditions For Range and Endurance Tables
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Road Map
On going research in the consortium and new
developments feed periodically into VTB
Pro. Continued integration with key tools used
by the ship building community as identified by
the Navy. New requests and feedback from
partners in industry currently using VTB Pro help
drive future requirements. VTB Pro framework
services to be updated annually or
semi-annually. New components, new component
versions, and component bug fixes updated on user
requests.
Academic and government version is freely
available. Support for porting older VTB models
(.vts files) to the VTB Pro environment.