Exploration of System Vulnerability in Naval Ship Concept Design

This thesis presents a methodology and analysis tool to explore ship system vulnerability using a simplified modeling approach during the naval ship concept design process within the Concept and Requirements Exploration (CandRE) process used at Virginia Tech. The CandRE is based on a Multi-Objective Generic Optimization (MOGO) approach that explores a design space to produce a non-dominated set of ship design solutions comparing design effectiveness, risk, and cost. The current CandRE process evaluates ship characteristics and intact system options to determine a design Overall Measure of Effectiveness (OMOE) through the calculation of Measures of Performance (MOPs). Using the CandRE ship design process and a Preliminary Arrangement and Vulnerability (PAandV) model, an Overall Measure of Vulnerability (OMOV) is calculated for each ship design using the developed process and tools described in this thesis. The OMOV is calculated by combining the Vulnerability Measure of Performance (VMOP) scores across multiple ship mission capabilities.