Decision support problem formulation for structural concept design of ship structures

The paper presents the structural synthesis environment for the formulation of the Decision Support Problem (DSP) in the concept design phase. The DSP for ship structures is based upon coordinated multi-criteria structural optimization and generation of the Pareto frontier. Underlying mathematical models, analysis/synthesis modules and the OCTOPUS software implementation are elaborated. Application of the developed design environment for concept design of the tank-car carrier is used as practical example.