Exploration of System Vulnerability in Naval Ship Concept Design

This paper presents a methodology and analysis tool to explore naval ship system vulnerability using a simplified preliminary arrangement and vulnerability (PA&V) modeling approach in the concept and requirements exploration (C&RE) process at Virginia Tech. This C&RE process uses a multiobjective genetic optimization (MOGO) to explore the design space for nondominated ship design solutions based on design effectiveness, cost, and risk. The previous C&RE process evaluated ship characteristics and only intact system options to determine a design overallmeasure of effectiveness (OMOE) through the calculation of Measures of Performance (MOPs). Vulnerability is very dependent on system design, architecture, and spatial arrangement, and for simplicity these were not developed or calculated. The new C&RE uses a simplified PA&V model so that an Overall Measure of Vulnerability (OMOV) can be calculated for each ship design using the new process and tools described in this paper. The OMOV is calculated by combining Vulnerability measure of performance scores across multiple ship mission options. It is then combined with the intact MOPs to calculate a more complete warfighting OMOE which can be used in the C&RE.