Collaborative maritime design using sequential optimisation and reliability assessment

The collaborative design of maritime structures involves not only multiple disciplines, but also uncertainty of information. Collaborative optimisation (CO) is a powerful multidisciplinary design and optimisation strategy known for its two-layer structure. In the original mathematical formulation of system-level optimisation, the second-level compatibility constraints are utilised. However, this makes a system-level CO algorithm have additional non-linear characteristics. Furthermore, during design optimisation considering uncertainty, the introduction of uncertainty quantisation increases complexity. Overall, the approach can reduce accuracy and efficiency. To solve these problems, a decoupling strategy called sequential optimisation and reliability assessment is proposed in this paper together with a collaborative uncertainty design and optimisation model. Three examples are provided to show how this hierarchical strategy can be applied to modern distributed maritime engineering design processes.