Multi-objective topology and size optimization of high-speed vehicle-passenger catamaran structure by genetic algorithm

Ship structural design has become recently an ever more important and difficult task, because it should always take into account several estimation criteria which are a crucial element of shipyard management, as the hull structural strength is one of the most important factors of overall ship safety, and the total cost of structural materials used for the construction of a ship is a significant part of her total construction cost. Simultaneously, a complete definition of the optimal structural design requires a formulation of size-topology-shape-material optimization task unifying the optimization problems from these four areas and giving an effective solution of this problem. So far, a significant progress towards a solution of this problem has not been achieved. An objective of the underlying paper was to develop an evolutionary algorithm for multi-objective optimization of both topology and scantlings of structural elements of large spatial sections of ships. In the paper an evolutionary algorithm where selection takes place based on the scalar objective function is proposed and applied to solve the problem of structural elements weight and cleaned and painted surface area on a high-speed vehicle-passenger catamaran structure with several design variables, such as plate thickness, scantlings of longitudinal stiffeners and transverse frames, and spacing between longitudinal and transversal members. The results of numerical experiments with the use of the developed algorithm are presented. They show that the proposed genetic algorithm can be an efficient multi-objective optimization tool for simultaneous design of the topology and sizing of ship structures. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.