Objective:
U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard ship structural designs require rigorous compliance with design criteria: U.S. Navy criteria for combatants and ABS criteria for non-combatants. The project goal is to improve the current state of design tools and practice by integrating the ship-specific MAESTRO software tools, including automation of design criteria evaluation and optimization with the Siemens Femap/Nastran finite element analysis software that is widely used throughout the U.S. naval ship design and in-service engineering enterprise. The goal is to make the structural design process faster, more accurate, and more agile. This connection of MAESTRO with Femap/Nastran will generate more design alternative evaluations during early-stage design and enable ship structures to be designed and built to be more robust in-service and thereby reduce the excessive levels of structural (SWBS Group 100) repairs and maintenance and lost availability being experienced by today’s fleet.
Summary:
This project focuses on integrating the ship-centric MAESTRO structural design and optimization toolset with the advanced Siemens Femap/Nastran structural modeling and analysis tools. This integration will modernize the MAESTRO tools via the advanced Siemens software and will equip the Femap/Nastran tools with ship-specific structural modeling, loading, analysis, and optimization capabilities. This integrated toolset will set a new standard of ship structural design and optimization tools that fully and automatically apply U.S. Navy structural design criteria to the engineering process. The application of these tools by shipbuilders, design firms, and integrated Navy-industry design teams can effectively result in more robust, survivable structures being developed under current and future U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard ship acquisitions.
Key Deliverables / Benefits:
This project will have a final Webinar or Demo along with a Final Report with Recommendations.
Overview
Project Team:
- MAESTRO Marine LLC.
- Siemens Government Technologies
- Ingalls Shipbuilding
2025
NSRP ASE Investment: $200K
