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Applying Queueing Theory and Architecturally-Oriented Early Stage Ship Design to the Concept of a Vessel Deploying a Fleet of Uninhabited Vehicles

Kouriampalis, Nikolaos; (2019) Applying Queueing Theory and Architecturally-Oriented Early Stage Ship Design to the Concept of a Vessel Deploying a Fleet of Uninhabited Vehicles. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London). Green open access

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Abstract

Uninhabited vehicles technology is becoming important in naval warfare, providing an entirely new capability. By projecting power through the deployment of such vehicles, the exposure of humans to military threats is reduced. Although the Royal Navy is pursuing the employment of uninhabited vehicles for a variety of applications, the concept of a substantial fleet of such vehicles, operated from a mothership, able to host and support their operations during a mission scenario, is still a novel design challenge. In the initial design stages, when little of design effort has been committed, ship design details will be far from fully defined and are still amenable to change without significant implications on the programme budget, or schedule. Consequently, there is a need to consider how more informed, early, but yet significant design decisions can be made regarding the design of a mothership deploying a fleet of uninhabited vehicles. Delivering a mothership’s operational capability through a complement of uninhabited vehicles would determine the ship’s configuration. The proposed approach, developed as part of this research, consists of decision-making and ship concept design tools, and provides a holistic means of integrating aspects of a fleet of uninhabited vehicles into early stage mothership design. The first tool uses queueing theory and has been employed to capture the impact of the required facilities to host and support a fleet of uninhabited vehicles carried in the ship’s mission bay and subsequently impact on the overall ship design, as well as providing a measure of the ship’s mission effectiveness. The second tool utilises the advantages of architecturally-oriented initial ship design approach to obtain balanced mothership designs and perform some early stage naval architecture analyses. The overall aim of proposing a quantitative approach to mothership performance has been demonstrated, showing the impact of operating a fleet of uninhabited vehicles, resulting in large costly vessels. Several limitations identified during the development and the implementation of the new approach have suggested areas for future work. It was concluded that the proposed approach would be appropriate to inform early investigation of the implications of operating a fleet of uninhabited vehicles from a new mothership configuration, since it allows a relatively fast exploration and comparison of different mothership design options against cost-capability criteria. However, it is suggested that while favourable design options could emerge through such comparative studies, these would merit from further investigations using simulation techniques that could refine the inputs to such novel ship concepts.

Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Qualification: Ph.D
Title: Applying Queueing Theory and Architecturally-Oriented Early Stage Ship Design to the Concept of a Vessel Deploying a Fleet of Uninhabited Vehicles
Event: UCL (University College London)
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © The Author 2019. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. - Some third party copyright material has been removed from this e-thesis.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10072008
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