A semantic feature model for conceptual design of warships

In the conceptual design phase of warships, important decisions are made based on relatively little information. It isdecided here whether a concept is feasible, and whether the resulting model should be the basis for further development. The conceptual design phase is characterised by the frequent use of rule of the thumb methods. These methods are not really preferred, because they are limited to a certain validity domain. The use of first principle methods is preferred instead. First principle methods are methods that describe the relationship between function, behaviour and structure using physical laws of nature. Because more detailed models are required here, more user input is needed. First principle methods may profit from the feature modelling approach. Feature modelling is a new way of product modelling that enables the designer to specify higher-level models with less effort. The use of semantics in the feature model, as proposed in this paper, gives model entities real meaning. When model entities have meaning, the designer no longer has to fulfil a bridge function between entities and design rules, and thus the total amount of “maintenance” effort of the designer can be reduced. This work is new in the sense that the feature model for a warship is introduced in an early phase of design, and that model semantics is used as a means to reduce user input at this phase of design