Smart design for ships in a smart product through-life and industry 4.0 environment

As the world becomes more connected and customer's `needs and wants' lean more towards bespoke products, the way they are designed and manufactured must adapt. Recognised as the main driver for the future of the manufacturing value chain, Industry 4.0 (i4) is rapidly gaining momentum worldwide. One of the key enablers of the i4 design model to achieve mass customisation manufactured at a mass production cost is the computational intelligence based Computer-Automated Design (CAutoD). This paper demonstrates how CAutoD realises the i4 concept for smart design of future ships and smart ships through-life. Following an overview of the i4 and CAutoD interface, a smart ship design technique is introduced to form an automated closed-loop approach to the entire ship design process. Then, key challenges and future directions on this roadmap are discussed. Lastly, a framework in which the concepts of morphing and free-form deformation are embedded into an evolutionary algorithm is developed to automate the design and optimisation process of the hull form.