Modern ships are highly complex technological systems and have a long and resource-intensive development cycle. Moreover, the final design must comply with many specific technical and regulatory requirements while constraining the capital and operational expenditures. Decisions made during the early stages of design have a large impact on ship functionality and determine the overall configuration of the ship; the advanced computational resources available today can be used to change the traditional approach to ship design, significantly improving the data available for these early-stage decisions. Moreover, the new methodologies can improve the ability to assess the impact of innovative technologies such as those inherent in the complete electrification of ships, and can simultaneously allow visualization of a three-dimensional (3D) virtual prototype of the designs. In this article, a methodological approach is presented that exemplifies these advantages.
