Advanced System of Systems Design Capability

The Navy needs to design new ships capable of accomplishing complex missions at a reduced cost. In order to enable US military response to threats around the world new ships must be designed with improved operational abilities and with capabilities to integrate with other ships and platforms for maximum operational flexibility. New enabling technology is needed for performing systematic design for optimal performance at three different levels: discipline level for optimizing a particular performance metric for a particular ship (i.e. hydrodynamics, survivability, signatures, seakeeping, etc.); improve the system level objectives for a particular ship (i.e. best operational capabilities as a unit at multiple disciplines for minimum cost); optimizing the system-of-systems level operational performance of multiple ships interacting and operating together as a group. Other elements such as the influence of uncertainty on performance metrics, the lack of detailed information at the upper level mission profile, and the impact of engineering decisions and scheduling on cost must be an integral part of the system of systems design process. The proposed SS-MDO-U system provides this new enabling technology. It will provide a systematic manner for performing physics based design for ships, optimizing individual performance metrics for each ship, and ensuring desirable inter-operational characteristics among ships. This design process will be carried in a cost conscious environment, while reliable performance will be secured in the presence of uncertainty. Finally, the SS-MDO-U system will be linked with the current Naval design tools and the new development will be demonstrated through a comprehensive case study on a topic directly related to Naval interests.