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Historical perspective on the structural design of

special ships and the evolution of structural design
methods
a a a
Tobin McNatt , Ming Ma & Shaun Hunter
a
DRS Technologies , Advanced Marine Technology Center , Stevensville , Maryland , USA
Published online: 22 Feb 2013.

To cite this article: Tobin McNatt , Ming Ma & Shaun Hunter (2013) Historical perspective on the structural design
of special ships and the evolution of structural design methods, Ships and Offshore Structures, 8:3-4, 404-414, DOI:
10.1080/17445302.2012.747290

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 Ships and Offshore Structures, 2013
Vol. 8, Nos. 3–4, 404–414, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17445302.2012.747290

Historical perspective on the structural design of special ships and the evolution
of structural design methods
Tobin McNatt∗, Ming Ma and Shaun Hunter
DRS Technologies, Advanced Marine Technology Center, Stevensville, Maryland, USA
(Received 19 January 2012; final version received 11 January 2013)

Recent decades of ship design and construction have produced numerous examples of innovative and special-purpose hull
forms, structures, speeds, size and complexity. These include progressively larger container ships, ultra-large crude carriers
and cruise vessels, liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers, high-speed catamarans, small-waterplane-area twin-hull (SWATH)
vessels, trimarans and others. The geometries, structural topologies and materials required for these vessels did not fit well
with traditional design methods and procedures, rooted in empirical approaches. Instead, these ships and their structures
Downloaded by [New York University] at 03:13 07 January 2015

required some form of direct analysis or first-principles approach, which by its nature is computer based. The ship design
and design approval community responded to this new set of requirements by developing and implementing new procedures,
new methods and new technologies to adequately address the need for first principles in the design. This design methodology
innovation in turn placed new and significant demands on the state of the design software environment under which the new
methods and procedures were being developed. This paper traces some of the innovative ship types that have evolved over
recent decades and the associated computer-based structural design technology evolution during this time. In particular, the
innovations of Professor Owen Hughes in establishing a first-principles approach to ship structural design, documenting the
theoretical basis for this approach in the textbook Ship Structural Design: A Rationally-Based, Computer-Aided, Optimization
Approach, and developing the MAESTRO computer-based implementation of the methodology are presented

Keywords: structural design; finite element analysis; structural limit state; optimisation

1. Introduction nity. The following sections describe the evolution of ships

With global economic development driving technology in-
novation and development over the past 30 years, shipown-
ers and operators have demanded new ship types and signif-
icant evolution of traditional ships. This demand for design
innovation in turn required development and change in the
methods, approaches and technologies used for ship design.
This continuous demand or requirement for improved ship
design methods, including structural design, also coincided
with the transition of computer software and hardware from
‘early’ stages of development to an era of rapidly expand-
ing resources. These expanding computer resources came in
the form of computational hardware capabilities and their
associated costs and availability to design groups; begin-
ning say, in the 1970s with no ‘personal computers’ and
only large, expensive ‘mainframe’ systems, and evolving
into very powerful and capable ‘engineering workstations’
available to each member of entire design groups. This
evolution in computer hardware had a parallel evolution
of the engineering design tool software development en-
vironment, which had a substantial impact on the quality
and complexity of ship-specific design tools, as well as
engineering software tools developed for non-ship design
industries that could be utilised by the ship design commu-
over recent decades and discuss key aspects of computer-
based tool development that supported the structural
design of these ships. Within the diverse arena of computer-
aided engineering (CAE) software applied to ship de-
sign, the paper focuses on the first-principles or rationally-
based approach that Professor Owen Hughes documented
in his first textbook Ship Structural Design: A Rationally-
Based, Computer-Aided, Optimization Approach (Hughes
1983), and its implementation into a practical CAE
tool for ship structural design and optimisation, named
MAESTRO.
2. Ship innovation
Fundamental to the evolution of ship classes and size for
different types of cargo and service is the achievement of
improved performance, including several aspects related to
improved performance of the ship’s structure; examples of
structural performance contribution to overall ship engi-
neering and economic performance include
• higher performance structures – reduced weight with
higher degrees of safety and reliability,
• lower fabrication costs,

∗
Corresponding author. Email: tmcnatt@drs-ds.com


C 2013 Taylor & Francis
 Ships and Offshore Structures
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Figure 1. Container ship evolution (Rodrigue, J-P et al. (2012) The Geography of Transport Systems, Hofstra University, Department of
Global Studies & Geography, http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans.) (This figure is available in colour online.)
• better economic performance in terms of lower con-
tribution to light ship weight and hence larger payload
fractions,
• reduced structural maintenance costs over the life
cycle,
• recognition of social responsibility in terms of en-
vironmental protection, collision/damage tolerance,
reduced risk of failure, etc.
Recent decades have also seen increasing pressure by
shipowners and operators for ships that deliver high returns
on investment.
2.1. Examples of evolving ship types/classes
2.1.1. Container ships
The origins of the modern container ship can be traced
back to the late 1930s where the need for commodities to
be efficiently delivered to markets rich with consumer de-
mand was in the mind of trucking company owners. These
trucking company owners understood the financial gain of
shortening the time for loading and unloading cargo aboard
ships and in 1956 began converting T2 tankers to become
the first successful container ships of the day. Basic de-
sign features that characterise modern container ships were
then introduced the next year. Container ships continued
to evolve to meet higher demands for commodities and
thus the extraordinary evolution of container ship design
progressed from the converted T2 tankers and C2 cargo
ships of the day to the Triple-E Maersk Class 18,000 TEU
container ships of today (see Figure 1).
As computer-based design tools advanced and the need
to accommodate the growing size, carrying capacity and
405
performance of these specialised ships emerged, naval ar-
chitects and designers were forced to rely less on empirical-
based methods and more on first-principles methods. This
trend continues today and classification societies, which es-
tablish and maintain technical standards for the construction
and operation of these ships, often require a first-principle
approach that relies on computer-based analysis tools to
verify these ever-changing design demands.
2.1.2. Cruise ships
The cruise ship market grew gradually out of the tradition
of transatlantic crossings, which typically never took fewer
than 4 days. To compete for passengers, cruise ships started
to add luxuries such as fine dining and lavish staterooms.
Cruise ship designs also began to evolve to meet specialised
requirements for enhanced transportation luxury in differ-
ent seasons, climate conditions, and geographic locations.
Figure 2 illustrates the long-standing and recent dramatic
growth in size and passenger capacity of the largest cruise
ships.
2.1.3. High-speed catamaran ferries
High-speed catamaran ships have long been of interest to
the naval and commercial communities as they offer in-
creased speed and capacity as well as improved seaworthi-
ness and comfort. They have been the subject of contin-
ued research and development since the first wave-piercing
catamaran prototypes in the early 1980s. Their role in the
defence market was marked by the Royal Australian Navy’s
chartering of the 86 m Incat 045 high-speed catamaran dur-
ing a 1999 operation. This opened up a renewed and con-
tinuing interest among the naval communities around the
 406 T. McNatt et al.
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Figure 2. Cruise ship evolution (source: Cruise Lines Interna-
tional Association). (This figure is available in colour online.)
world to integrate the high-speed catamaran technology into
the defence market (e.g. Joint High Speed Vessel, JHSV;
Figure 3).
As these catamarans have become larger and faster, their
designs have required more first-principles analysis. Also,
these vessels are constructed of aluminium, which places
additional demands on the design, fabrication and certifi-
cation process. These demands led to the development of
advanced modelling and analysis/design tools to be applied
to the high-speed catamaran class of vessels.
2.2. Special ship structural design requirements
The advent of new ship types, designs of increasingly
larger scale, combined with their respective commercial
service and/or military mission requirements dictated new
and more rigorous methods of developing and approving
ship structural designs. This trend also included the tradi-
tional adherence to successful economic performance of
the vessels from their owners/operators point of view. As
a result, a steady and complex progression has taken place
in the development and evolution of computer-based tools
Figure 3. Joint High Speed Vessel.
that could generate more accurate and more rigorous sim-
ulations of ship structural loads and responses.
3. The design software environment
Through the 1960s and 1970s, ship structural design was
beginning to identify new technologies that could be ap-
plied to evolve structural design towards a more rigorous
and accurate process. This transition would occur gradually
as new technologies such as computers and computer soft-
ware in the form of engineering design and analysis tools
were developed. These new technologies would become
accepted elements or aspects in procedural approaches for
ship structural design, moving progressively away from the
historic algorithmic/empirical rules based approaches. Ship
structural design would utilise several complementary tech-
nologies that would change the methodology and tools used
for ship structural design. These tools and technologies in-
cluded the implementation of engineering software to per-
form structural modelling, ship structural loads modelling,
structural response in the form of finite element (FE) anal-
ysis, structural limit state or failure mode (e.g. buckling)
evaluation and structural design optimisation or design syn-
thesis. Naturally, these engineering software technologies
and tools relied on the coincident evolution of increasingly
more powerful engineering computational capabilities. This
combination of software and computer hardware capabil-
ities became known as the basis for “first-principles” or
“rationally based” ship structural design, under which the
complexities of conducting a more rigorous, physics-based
design and analysis became more practical. This rationally
based approach (see Figure 4) is implemented in the MAE-
STRO code developed by Professor Owen Hughes, with
its basis originally documented in the textbook Ship Struc-
tural Design: A Rationally-Based, Computer-Aided, Op-
timization Approach (Hughes 1983) and updated in Ship
Structural Analysis and Design (Hughes and Paik 2010).
The basic components of the computer-based first-
principles ship structural design implemented in MAE-
STRO are further summarised in the following sections.
3.1. Modelling evolution
The first step in a computer-based first-principles ship
structural design process using the FE methodology is to
idealise the ship structure as a mathematical model by dis-
cretising the structural system into an assembly of small
finite-sized entities called FEs. The points where the FEs are
interconnected are known as nodes or nodal points, and the
procedure for generating these nodes and their associated
FEs has continued to evolve over time. In the development
evolution of MAESTRO, the early 1980s found ship struc-
tural designers using text editors to build representative FE
models. Unlike ‘general-purpose’ (i.e. not ship-oriented, or
‘thin-walled’ structures oriented like the MAESTRO code)
finite element analysis (FEA) model data decks, the text
 Ships and Offshore Structures
Figure 4. Six elements of rationally based ship structural design.
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input of MAESTRO was a high-level ‘smart’ data set, or-
ganised as strakes, modules and substructures. At the time,
it was not practical to build a full ship model with general-
purpose FE code text formats, whereas with the MAESTRO
input text and data construct, it was possible and practical
to model a full ship.
After these text data files were generated, punchcards
for each line of data were assembled into decks, which
formed the FEA data and analysis job control definition,
and were then fed to an IBM mainframe, resulting in a very
laborious process.
After the days of the punchcard data decks were gone
and computer-aided drawing (CAD) packages and comput-
ing power became more widely available, MAESTRO FE
models were constructed graphically, piece by piece, but
still using only text editors to create the analysis data file.
However, in the early 1990s, work began to develop
a separate MAESTRO Modeller (MM), which would fa-
cilitate the creation of coarse-mesh, full ship FE mod-
els. The MM was a great improvement for the engineer
tasked with creating FE models. In these early years of
the MM development, a number of ship classification so-
cieties adopted the modelling methodologies (i.e. strake-
based coarse-mesh modelling and smeared stiffeners) into
their structural analysis systems, and some of these funda-
mental modelling methodologies live on today.
As CAD packages grew in popularity and the process
of creating three-dimensional (3D) surface models became
a prerequisite to almost all design activities, FEA code
developers (e.g. FEMAP, Finite Element Modelling and
Postprocessing) began to add capability to utilise 3D sur-
face data, which could then be attributed with structural
properties (e.g. material type, plate thickness, etc.). This
proved to have time-saving benefits and today is one of
the primary processes executed by the designer. However,
due to the different requirements of the 3D surface model
407
and the FE model (e.g. element connectivity), the problem
of defactoring a 3D surface model remains problematic
and time consuming. The MAESTRO modelling paradigm
never took full advantage of CAD packages and surface
modelling as many other general FEM applications did, in
part, due to the complex nature of ship structures.
However, the MAESTRO modelling development set its
sights on leveraging third-party ship product models (e.g.
NAPA Steel) or third-party FE models (e.g. ANSYS or
NASTRAN). This development brought more modelling
flexibility and helped to facilitate using FEA in the very
early stages of the ship structural design process. Further,
this open data interfacing enables the user to automesh
a full ship model almost instantly. The process is driven
by user-defined meshing parameters that are dependent on
the analysis need (e.g. global response, local response or
fatigue analysis). This efficient model generation process,
illustrated in Figure 5, represents the state of the art for FE
modelling for ship design today.
3.2. Structural loads evolution
The second step in the rationally based design approach is
to model (i.e. to specify) the appropriate loads that the struc-
tural system will encounter from the environment through-
out its life. These loads, both static and dynamic, come from
the ship’s environment (mainly because of gravity and fluid
pressures) and from its motion (Hughes and Paik 2010).
Over MAESTRO’s development history, many of these en-
vironmental loading components (e.g. point loads, hydro-
static loads, quasi-static wave loads) were added, which
brought higher fidelity and accuracy to applying ship-based
loads as well as ease of use for ship applications (e.g. tank
loading).
In the early stages of load implementation, MAE-
STRO only included point loads and the ability to impose
 408 T. McNatt et al.
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Figure 5. Efficient model generation process. (This figure is available in colour online.)
hull-girder-level cross-sectional moments. This was unique
to MAESTRO and very useful to the naval archi-
tect/designer as he/she could quickly generate a coarse-
mesh MAESTRO model of a mid-ship section and quickly
analyse the response. As development continued, other
ship-based loading components were implemented into
MAESTRO, such as automatic hydrostatic loads (e.g. on
the hull envelope), quasi-static wave loads and tank loading.
An important distinction between MAESTRO’s ship-based
loading implementation and general FE packages is that
MAESTRO was designed to apply the loads in the earth
coordinate system, rather than the body coordinate system.
The inertia forces due to gravity and ship motion accelera-
tions were internally calculated based on the ship’s instant
floating condition. This approach enables MAESTRO to
internally calculate a consistent mass by dividing the loads
by gravity and to use this mass to calculate any inertial (i.e.
acceleration-related) forces for all six degrees of freedom,
which is of great importance to a free-floating system such
as a ship.
In recent years, as ship designs became more com-
plicated, demands on seakeeping load simulation of ves-
sels have increased. In design practice, methods for pre-
dicting seakeeping motions and loads are mainly of two
categories, strip theory methods and 3D-panel methods.
Methods based on strip theory provide reasonable mo-
tion prediction and are computationally efficient. However,
many strip theory methods provide only hull-girder sec-
tional forces, such as bending moment and shear force,
which cannot be directly applied to a 3D FE structural
model. For panel-based methods, the outputs include not
only the global hull-girder loads, but also panel pres-
sures, which are well suited for 3D FEA. However, be-
cause the panel-based methods are computationally expen-
sive, meshes used for hydrodynamic analyses are usually
different from the structural model meshes. Therefore, the
panel pressure calculated from a hydrodynamic model mesh
has to be transferred to the structural model mesh. The
resulting discrepancy in the pressure map, regardless of
what interpolation method is used, causes an unbalanced
structural model. To obtain equilibrium of the unbalanced
structural model, a common practice is to use the ‘inertia
relief ’ approach. However, this type of balancing causes
a change in the hull-girder load distribution, which in
turn could cause inconsistency in an extreme load anal-
ysis (ELA) or a spectral fatigue analysis (SFA). Recently,
a proposed method (Chen et al. 2008), which maps the
panel source strength instead of the panel pressure from
a hydrodynamic mesh to the structural mesh, is used to
formulate the equations of motion in the structural mesh.
This innovative idea gives in a structural model with perfect
equilibrium.
In recent years, MAESTRO has extended its traditional
quasi-static loads to linear potential flow loads by adding
a new module, MAESTRO-Wave. MAESTRO-Wave is
a frequency domain 3D-panel potential flow seakeeping
module that is seamlessly integrated into the MAESTRO
suite. MAESTRO-Wave leverages an existing MAESTRO
model’s wetted panel definition and weight distribution,
and generates a database of regular unit-wave responses,
including ship motions, accelerations and dynamic pres-
sure acting on the hull for each speed, heading and wave
frequency. The hydrodynamic load database, obtained by ei-
ther MAESTRO-Wave or a third-party tool such as VERES,
serves as a cornerstone for MAESTRO’s ELA and SFA.
These analysis procedures are illustrated in Figures 6 and
7, respectively.
An important issue with floating structures’ analyses is
to ensure that the model is balanced. It is especially vital
for the SFA because it is not practical to visually examine
 Ships and Offshore Structures
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Figure 6. ELA procedure. (This figure is available in colour online.)
the dynamic response of every unit wave. MAESTRO has
two ways to solve the equilibrium issue mentioned above.
One is a method similar to Malenica’s, in principle. The
other is to use quadratic programming to redistribute loads
based on the hull-girder sectional load calculated by hy-
drodynamic analyses, either by strip theory methods or b
3D-panel methods. The goal is to minimise the applied
nodal forces on the FE model. The constraints are that the
nodal forces must match the six hull-girder sectional forces
at each station: surge force, heave force, sway force, vertical
bending moment, horizontal bending moment and torsional
moment.
Figure 7. SFA procedure. (This figure is available in colour online.)
409
3.3. Finite element analysis
The finite element method (FEM) had its roots in the 1940s
driven by the need for solving complex elasticity and struc-
tural analysis problems in civil and aeronautical engineer-
ing. Development of the FEM began in earnest in the middle
to late 1950s for airframe and structural analysis (Gere and
Weaver 1990) and gathered momentum at the University of
Stuttgart through the work of JohnArgyris and at Berkeley
through the work of RayW.Clough in the 1960s for use in
civilengineering. By the late 1950s, the key concepts of
stiffnessmatrix and element assembly existed essentially in
the form used today. The National Aeronautics and Space
 410
Administration (NASA) issued a request for proposals for
the development of the FE Strang’s An Analysis of the Finite
Element Method (Fix and Strang 1973).
A variety of specialisations under the umbrella of the
mechanical engineering discipline (such as aeronautical,
biomechanical and automotive industries) commonly use
integrated FEM in the design and development of their
products. Several modern FEM packages include specific
components such as thermal, electromagnetic, fluid and
structural working environments. In a structural simula-
tion, FEM helps tremendously in producing stiffness and
strength visualisations and also in minimising weight, ma-
terials and costs.
FEM allows entire designs to be constructed, refined and
optimised before the design is manufactured; this powerful
design tool has significantly improved both the standard
of engineering designs and the methodology of the design
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process in many industrial applications (Brauer et al. 1985).
The introduction of FEM has substantially decreased the
time to take products from concept to the production line
(Brauer et al. 1985). It is primarily through improved initial
prototype designs using FEM that testing and development
have been accelerated (McLaren 2006). In summary, ben-
efits of FEM include increased accuracy, enhanced design
and better insight into critical design parameters, virtual
prototyping, fewer hardware prototypes, a faster and less ex-
Figure 8. Structural limit state evaluation. (This figure is available in colour online.)
T. McNatt et al.
pensive design cycle, increased productivity and increased
revenue (Brauer et al. 1985).
Both general-purpose FEM codes (e.g. NASTRAN
and ANSYS) and specialised, ship-oriented codes such as
MAESTRO were used to conduct structural design and
analysis in support of the evolution of ship types and sizes
from the 1970s through the present.
3.4. Limit state analysis
In the past, criteria and procedures for the design of steel-
plated structures were primarily based on allowable stresses
and simplified buckling checks for structural components.
However, it is now well recognised that the limit state ap-
proach is a better basis for design since it is difficult to
determine the real safety margin of any structure using lin-
ear elastic methods alone. It also readily follows that it is of
crucial importance to determine the true limit state if one is
to obtain consistent measures of safety that can then form a
fairer basis for comparison of structures of different sizes,
types and characteristics.
Ship structures, such as thin-walled stiffened plate
structures, have a large number of limit or failure states
at various levels of structure. Preventing these failures and
providing a margin of safety from failure is a basic compo-
nent of designing ship structures. Navies, ship classification
 Ships and Offshore Structures 411

societies, research organisations and others have developed

so-called ‘sets of limit states’ that are intended to codify
the results of research and offer practical means to analyse
ship structures against their respective failure limits.
With the evolution of ships leading to larger, faster ves-
sels, some of which include new geometries such as small-
waterplane-area twin-hull (SWATH) and the high-speed,
wave-piercing catamarans, the comprehensive treatment or
analysis of structural limit states grew in significance. The
design challenge was to address the scope and complex-
ity of ship structures, which routinely include thousands
of unique stiffened panel units that should each be evalu-
ated against numerous specific limit states. Each of these
analyses includes load-specific boundary conditions and
analysis equations or routines. Procedures for conducting
these analyses have evolved along with the ships being
designed. Tools have been developed to improve the de-
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gree of accuracy and to enhance the efficiency of com-

pleting the large volume of such analyses that became
necessary.
In the early 1980s, Professor Owen Hughes innovated
an early methodology to address limit state evaluation for
Figure 10. Evaluation patch parameters. (This figure is available
ship structures using a comprehensive approach. Figure 8 in colour online.)
depicts the basic stiffened panel structural entity that re-
quires limit state evaluation. The original MAESTRO im-
plementation established a structural modelling paradigm purpose FEM modellers can be read into MAESTRO and
that used/required stiffened panel entities named ‘strakes’. the structural entities that should be subjected to limit
The strakes included a data model that could automatically state evaluation are automatically identified and evaluated.
use MAESTRO’s limit state algorithms and analyses com- Figures 9 and 10 illustrate that for a general FE model,
pare local loads against limit values of those loads. This MAESTRO automatically regroups certain elements to-
method enabled automating the limit state evaluation for gether to form an evaluation patch.
thousands of structural entities throughout the global ship Once an evaluation patch is identified, the correspond-
structural model for multiple load cases against a standard ing panel properties and stresses are collected and passed
set of more than 20 specific limit states or failure modes. to a user-selected limit state set for failure mode evaluation.
Since the 1980s, additional limit state “sets” and anal-
ysis procedures have been added as options to the pro-
cess, including US Navy limit state formulas and Professor
Paik’s ALPS/ULSAP and ALPS/HULL limit state algo-
rithms (Paik and Thayamballi 2003).
In recent years, the modelling paradigm for MAESTRO
has been generalised so that models developed with general-

Figure 9. Evaluation patches of a general model. (This figure is Figure 11. ALPS/HULL bending moment versus curvature.
available in colour online.) (This figure is available in colour online.)
 412 T. McNatt et al.
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Figure 12. ALPS/HULL one-bay model. (This figure is available Figure 13. Design synthesis. (This figure is available in colour
in colour online.) online.)

Another important limit state is the ultimate strength of
the hull girder. The collapse of a ship’s hull is the most catas-
trophic failure event because it often results in the complete
loss of the ship. MAESTRO integrated ALPS/HULL, a spe-
cial purpose analysis of progressive hull-girder collapse,
developed by Professor Paik, to address this important col-
lapse mechanism (see Figures 11 and 12).
3.5. Optimisation and design synthesis
‘Thus rationally-based design involves a thorough and ac-
curate analysis of all the factors affecting the safety and
performance of the structure throughout its life, and a syn-
thesis of this information’ (Hughes and Paik 2010). Refer-
ring back to Figure 4, the six elements of rationally based
ship structural design, Steps 1–5 comprise the modelling,
loading, response analysis and limit state evaluation of the
structure. Steps 1–5 encompass the normal design process
of engineering the structure and evaluating its suitability
for its intended service. Step 6 adds the optimisation pro-
cess to complete the cycle of rationally based structural
design. Adding optimisation to the design cycle and pro-
cess elevates the degree to which the computer can aid
in the structural design. With the structural complexity

Figure 14. Ship design tool evolution. (This figure is available in colour online.)
 Ships and Offshore Structures
required to support mission requirements, numerous load-
ing conditions, pressure from owners/operators to reduce
structural weight and other factors, optimisation provides an
opportunity to improve the safety and performance of
the structure while minimising its weight fraction and
cost.
Optimisation automated by the computer and software
for ship structural design was introduced with the initial
strategy and actual software in MAESTRO in the early
1980s. This capability has been updated as the architecture
of MAESTRO evolved, and Figure 13 shows the current
development approach for MAESTRO’s optimisation ca-
pability. Figure 13 indicates that a more comprehensive
approach is being implemented – an approach that auto-
matically links or unifies more aspects of the design than
earlier generations of design tools have.
Figure 14 is another view of this trend towards unifying
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design tool architecture, geometry and topology modelling,
loads analysis, and structural evaluation and optimisation.
In this approach, the ship’s topology model serves as
the master organisation model for the design, and changes
made in the topology can flow through the parametric struc-
tural model and into the FE models of the structural design
domain with little intervention on the part of the user. The
structural design process with loads, FEA, limit state eval-
uation and structural optimisation can be performed. The
results can be returned to the parametric structural model to
‘update’ the design, including updating subordinate models
such as structural cost and weight.
This design tool approach and paradigm is under de-
velopment today. Elements of this approach have been im-
plemented using robust commercially available tools such
as NAPA Steel serving in the role of parametric structural
model, and FEA models are generated automatically using
an existing interface.
The design processes illustrated in Figures 13 and 14 re-
flect the development and evolution of technology, software
and computers over the past several decades.
4. Conclusions
This paper provides an overview of the significant develop-
ment and evolution of commercial and military ships over
the past several decades. Through this period of time, ships
such as container ships and cruise ships have increased
dramatically in size and capacity. High-speed catamarans
have expanded their size, speed and range of service for
both commercial transport and military applications. These
changes created a need for an equally substantial devel-
opment and evolution in the technology and tools used to
design and certify/approve the structures of these vessels. In
the 1970s, the application of FEA, while not a new technol-
ogy, remained largely in a research and development state
for ship structural design. FE-based structural engineering
was not efficient enough to keep pace with design and hence
413
could not contribute as an integral aspect of the ship design
process.
With the introduction of MAESTRO in the early 1980s,
a new approach for conducting ship structural design be-
came available. MAESTRO’s strategy was to implement
into a practical ship structural design tool a rationally-
based approach to ship structural design. This was achieved
through a computer code that included global, or full
ship, FE modelling, ship-oriented load modelling, FEA,
limit state evaluation and structural optimisation using
designer-specified objective functions. This integrated code
has been continuously improved since its initial release
in order to meet evolving needs of the ship structural
design community. Ship structural design is a complex
process, and a code to address it is complex as well.
MAESTRO has recently had ELA and SFA capabilities
incorporated, as examples of ongoing evolution. The cou-
pling of MAESTRO with more widely applied general-
purpose FE models and analyses has also expanded signif-
icantly in recent years. This enables a broad base of ship
structural designers to access and utilise unique aspects of
MAESTRO, such as comprehensive and automated limit
state evaluation. In conclusion, the original concept and
strategy of MAESTRO, to implement a methodology for
rationally based ship structural design, has withstood the
test of time, and illustrates the efficacy of the approach.
MAESTRO is a testament to the creativity and initiative
on the part of Professor Owen Hughes, and his work is
expected to continue to evolve to meet the changing needs
and requirements of ship structural design.
Acknowledgements
The material presented in this paper reflects the innovation of
Professor Owen Hughes and close collaboration from a small
team of researchers and developers including Professor Farrokh
Mistree of the University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, Professor
Vedran Žanić of the University of Zagreb, Croatia, and Professor
Jeom Kee Paik of Pusan National University, Korea.
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