Ships are complex structures where there is an emphasis on strength, stiffness, and minimum weight. In order to achieve these characteristics the structural arrangement of the ship is crated as a grillage of flatplates stiffened both longitudinally and transversally. One important aspect of the design of the structure involves design for production – that the design for strength and/or stiffness is physically possible to construct in the shipyard.

Our second year students are challenged to undertake design calculations for a ship structure and to assess a ship structural design for production. The students have to design the breakdown of a midship module of a ship into smaller interim products. They make an assessment of the production sequence and predict the production time for each interim product and their final assembly into the midship module.

As part of this challenge, they have to construct a scale model of the breakdown design to demonstrate how the final structure is brought together.