Exploring market uncertainty in early ship design: Simulating the effect of design parameters on vessel performance in an uncertain market

To decrease Europe’s harmful emissions, the European Union aims to substantially increase its offshore wind energy capacity. To further develop offshore wind energy, investment in ever-larger construction vessels is necessary. Designing these vessels is difficult however, as this market is characterised by a large but seemingly unpredictable growth of market demand, turbine size and distance from shore. Currently no way of dealing with such market uncertainty within the ship design process was found to exist. This research aims to develop a method that is able to deal with market uncertainty in early ship design by increasing knowledge when design freedom is still high. The method uses uncertainty modelling prior to the requirement definition stage by performing global market research, and during the concept design stage by iteratively co-evolving the vessel design and business case in parallel. The method consists of three parts; simulating an expected market from data, modelling multiple vessel designs, and an uncertainty model that evaluates the performance of the vessels in the market. The case study into offshore wind foundation installation vessels showed that the method can provide valuable insight in the effect of ship design parameters like main dimensions, crane size and ship speed on the performance in an uncertain market. These results were used to create an initial design that is expected to perform well in the uncertain market. The developed method thus provides a way to deal with market uncertainty in the early ship design process.Marine Technolog